Paramount hasn’t but taken over Warner Bros. Discovery and NCS. Bari Weiss isn’t overseeing NCS — at the very least not but.
But NCS has already misplaced a major on-air talent.
Paula Reid, the community’s chief authorized affairs correspondent, is leaving to affix MS NOW.
Variety’s Brian Steinberg reports Reid is leaving NCS “in part due to the uncertainty of its future as its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is acquired by Paramount Skydance. Reid turned down a chance to renew her current contract at NCS, according to two people familiar with the situation, in part because NCS’s next era appears chaotic.”
The information comes throughout per week when Reid featured prominently on NCS, speaking concerning the varied Supreme Court choices handed down because the courtroom’s time period got here to an in depth.
On Tuesday, Status’ Oliver Darcy wrote that Reid was anticipated to go away NCS. Her contract is about to run out this summer season. NCS made a “strong push” to retain Reid as a result of executives seen her as “a rising on-air talent,” Darcy reported. Reid has, certainly, stuffed in as an anchor throughout her time at NCS. Despite all that, she wished to maneuver on.
Darcy wrote, “As she has mulled her decision, Reid has had candid conversations with NCS executives in which she has raised concerns about Paramount’s pending $111 billion acquisition of NCS parent company Warner Bros. Discovery. In those private conversations, I’m told that Reid has expressed discomfort with the takeover and the uncertainty it has cast over NCS’s future.”
We nonetheless don’t know what would occur with NCS if and when Paramount beneficial properties management. And we additionally have no idea for certain if Weiss will finally oversee NCS, as she does now with CBS News.
But that uncertainty, apparently, was sufficient for Reid, 43, to see MS NOW as a greater possibility for her profession. Reid joined NCS from CBS News in 2021.
Darcy wrote, “Ultimately, Reid decided the uncertainty surrounding the merger was too great and I’m told that she concluded it wasn’t worth rolling the dice on an organization facing such an unsettled future.”
Reid would be the first major on-air talent to go away NCS forward of the approaching merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, however there are a number of different names price maintaining a tally of.
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There have been rumors that Anderson Cooper, who left CBS’s “60 Minutes” not lengthy after Weiss took over CBS News, is cautious of working beneath her ought to she take over NCS. In addition, NCS contributor Kara Swisher has flat-out stated she would depart NCS as soon as Paramount takes over.
At an awards ceremony at Syracuse University again in March, Swisher stated, “I don’t think they’ll be good owners. I don’t. I think they’ve already shown several times, including editorial choices … that they have no interest in journalism. And I refuse to work for an organization that doesn’t respect journalists.”
Darcy wrote, “(Paramount boss David) Ellison has hamstrung NCS management by not telegraphing his plans for the news organization post-merger, including whether (NCS CEO Mark) Thompson will remain as its top boss. That uncertainty has made it difficult for network executives to have candid contract renewal conversations with its journalists, given they do not know what is around the corner. Many NCS journalists have watched in horror as Ellison has allowed Weiss to upend CBS News and have little interest in working under her.”
One other thing price mentioning is that Reid is a superb rent for MS NOW, which continues to inventory its roster with glorious talent since splitting away from NBC News late final 12 months.
This has been fairly the week for information organizations retracting tales.
First, there was the whole NPR mess, the place veteran journalist Nina Totenberg mistakenly reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was retiring. (He isn’t retiring).
Now comes this story involving ESPN, NFL free-agent defensive lineman Michael Pennel Jr. and a murder investigation. In April, ESPN reported that Pennel was a “person of interest” within the investigation into the loss of life of a girl within the Dominican Republic. ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio wrote,
“Among other things, the story cited unnamed sources to support the notion that Pennel knew the woman whose remains were found on property he previously owned.”
But the ESPN story has since been faraway from the web site. On June 18, ESPN ran one other be aware beneath the headline: “ESPN update to Michael Pennel Jr. story.” The be aware stated:
On June 18, 2026, ESPN revealed a narrative about Michael Pennel Jr. and an investigation into the loss of life of a girl within the Dominican Republic who disappeared on September 5, 2021. ESPN has decided the story contained errors and has eliminated it. Since the publication of the story, Pennel’s representatives have supplied ESPN with documentation, together with journey and monetary information, supporting Pennel’s statements to ESPN that he was not within the Dominican Republic on the time the girl disappeared. Pennel’s representatives additionally issued a press release, which can be discovered here.
Florio wrote, “Frankly, that’s not an ‘update’ — it’s a full-blown retraction.”
You may learn extra about this from Awful Announcing’s Sam Neumann: “ESPN deletes Mike Pennel murder investigation story, admits it ‘contained errors.’”
One of the extra attention-grabbing tidbits that got here up in the entire Nina Totenberg-Samuel Alito story was that NPR had a prewritten story for when Alito does retire.
As I wrote in Wednesday’s publication, it’s fairly frequent for information organizations to have prewritten tales about well-known or vital folks for once they retire or die.
My Poynter colleagues Kristen Hare and Fernanda Camarena write about this matter in “Why do journalists prewrite stories?”
Hare and Camarena write about what sorts of tales could possibly be prewritten and why.
While the NPR mistake wasn’t as a result of somebody unintentionally hit “publish” on a narrative earlier than it was able to go, there may be at all times a danger of that taking place. Hare and Camarena go over the safeguards information organizations can put in place to make it possible for doesn’t occur.
They add, “The NPR episode turned out not to be a cautionary tale about prewriting. But it was a reminder that no matter how much preparation goes into a story, the last and most important step is making sure the news has actually happened.”
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