• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 5 hours ago

The outsider brought into CBS News to blow things up has actually said “I wanna blow this up” at meetings with her new colleagues.

Who goes into a new company where she is not exactly welcome and then tells everybody to get ready for explosions, metaphorical or otherwise?

Bari Weiss does, according to The Wall Street Journal, which reported that “I wanna blow this up” is a “rallying cry” that has become a catchphrase for her around CBS News.

Weiss, 41, is the editor and opinion-writing firebrand whose Free Press web site was purchased by Paramount for $150 million. 

She was then named editor in chief at CBS News by Paramount CEO David Ellison, to whom she reports directly.

Clearly, she has been given a mandate to blow things up at CBS News, but what does that really mean? 

In the real world, when things get blown up, they get destroyed. So, when people go into an organization and say they want to blow things up, it implies that their first order of business is to destroy everything. 

Is this what Weiss intends to do at CBS News? Reduce it to a smoking crater and then rebuild it from scratch? 

What the person really means is that they intend to make changes, but “make changes” is boring. 

“Blow things up” is more exciting. It signals the arrival of someone who really means business, so get ready for the pyrotechnics.

My choice would have been something along the lines of “I’m gonna break a few eggs” because eggs are not bombs.

By now, however, “I wanna blow things up” is a tired cliché, right up there with “disruptor” “change agent,” “game changer,” “storyteller” and possibly “influencer” (although the jury is still out on that one).

Maybe Bari Weiss is a cliché too -- the hard-charging outsider who is going to march right into a new company that has been around since the Year One and blast holes everywhere.

CBS News isn’t Cracker Barrel. You can’t just go in there and remove all the tchotchkes and bric-a-brac and not expect an uproar from your customer base or, in the case of CBS News, the people who work there.

Like all the other TV news organizations, the air talent at the top of the food chain are not shrinking violets. 

Many of them have long had direct access to the top people at their companies and they make their opinions known when outsiders come in and try to rearrange the furniture. 

The WSJ story, published last week, said Weiss sent a “survey-like email” to staffers asking them to “outline” their jobs or otherwise describe what they do all day.

Come to think of it, President Trump and Elon Musk did something similar when they asked federal employees to send emails to the Department of Government Efficiency listing five things they had accomplished in the previous week.

The oddest part of the WSJ story was the part about how Weiss arrives at the office. The story said “she travels to [the offices of CBS News] with a caravan of SUVs and a gaggle of bodyguards.” Unnamed sources said she is the target of unspecified threats.

If that is true, then may she get all the protection she needs. Still, a motorcade for a network news editor in chief? That’s a new one.