• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, 11 hours ago

The establishment at CBS News seems to have won a small victory in the conflict between new and old that has set in since disruptor Bari Weiss was installed as editor-in-chief last October.

Instead of Weiss, longtime CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell will star as moderator and interviewer on the news division’s next “Town Hall” special.

Weiss, 41, inaugurated this series of shows -- formally titled “CBS News Things That Matter” -- last December with guest Erika Kirk, widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was murdered last September.

In the “Town Hall” format instituted by Weiss, a guest is interviewed on stage in front of an audience, who are able to ask questions of the guest.

For that first show, Weiss named herself as interviewer and moderator. Casting herself in a starring role on a prime-time CBS News special raised eyebrows because it was the type of role for which a top anchor from the news division would customarily be chosen.

But for the next “Things That Matter” special, announced Thursday, Weiss has ceded the moderator role to O’Donnell, 52.

The next show will feature Maryland Governor Wes Moore, 47, who is considered to be a moderate Democrat, not beholden to far-left ideologies.

“CBS News Things That Matter: A Town Hall With Governor Wes Moore” will air in a high-profile timeslot on Sunday, February 15, at 8 p.m. Eastern, directly following “60 Minutes.”

That represents a step up from December’s first “Town Hall,” which aired on a Saturday night, on December 13. 

That show drew a total live audience of 1.9 million with a tally of 265,000 in the demo, 25-54. 

But at the time, CBS said the show was the most-watched interview on social media in the history of CBS News.

By scheduling the next “Town Hall” on Sunday night instead of Saturday, the strategy seems to be to use this more-prominent time period as a promotional launchpad for social media viewing.

Building the profile of CBS News content on social media is central to Weiss’s plans for preparing the news division for the post-broadcasting era.

“Our strategy until now has been [to] cling to the audience that remains on broadcast television,” The Wall Street Journal quoted her as saying Tuesday at an “all-hands” meeting of CBS News staff. “I’m here to tell you that if we stick to that strategy, we’re toast.”

An announcement from CBS News released on Tuesday indicates that Weiss has been very busy on another front too -- namely, lining up new regular contributors to CBS News, 19 of them, to be exact.

The contributors come from fields that include politics, national security, health, arts, food, style and happiness. They write books, magazine articles and host podcasts.

The contributor on happiness is Arthur Brooks, a Harvard social scientist and a columnist for the Free Press website, which Weiss founded and still runs.

The others are Elliot Ackerman, former Marine and CIA veteran who writes on war; Peter Attia, founder of Outlive, an app covering longevity science; Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-American advocate for women’s rights; Roger Carstens, career diplomat; cookbook author Caroline Chambers; and chef Clare de Boer.

Others are historian Niall Ferguson, also a Free Press columnist; economist Roland Fryer Jr.; neuroscientist Andrew Huberman; Coleman Hughes, Free Press columnist on the subjects of race, public policy and applied ethics; functional medicine expert Mark Hyman; and physics and astronomy professor Janna Levin.

Rounding out the list are trend researcher Casey Lewis; one-time national security advisor H.R. McMaster; financial journalist Patrick McGee; Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute; fashion journalist Lauren Sherman; and technology journalist Derek Thompson.