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Paramount said Monday that it has bought the news and commentary website The Free Press and installed its founder, Bari Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News, saying it believes the country longs for news that is balanced and fact-based. It’s a bold step for the television network of Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and 60 Minutes, long viewed by many conservatives as the personification of a liberal media establishment. The network is placing someone in a leadership who has developed a reputation for resisting orthodoxy and fighting woke culture. I am confident her entrepreneurial drive and editorial vision will invigorate CBS News, said David Ellison, who took over this summer as the corporate leader overseeing the network when his company, Skydance, purchased Paramount. This move is part of Paramounts bigger vision to modernize content and the way it connects directly and passionately to audiences around the world. No purchase price was announced for The Free Press, which has grown to reach 1.5 million subscribers since Weiss started it after leaving The New York Times as an opinion editor. When she left the Times, she wrote a letter of resignation that spoke of a culture of intolerance at the newspaper and said she was bullied by colleagues who disagreed with her. Weiss will report directly to Ellison and partner with the current CBS News President Tom Cibrowski, who reports to Paramount executive George Cheeks. Editor-in-chief is a new role at CBS News. Ellison said that Weiss will shape editorial priorities, champion core values across platforms and lead innovation in how the organization reports and delivers the news. In a letter to CBS News employees on Monday, Weiss said that watching CBS was part of a family tradition growing up in Pittsburgh. Her goal in the next few weeks is to get to know the staff, she said. I want to hear from you about whats working, what isnt, and your thoughts on how we can make CBS News the most trusted news organization in America and the world, Weiss wrote. Ill approach it the way any reporters would with an open mind, a fresh notebook and an urgent deadline. Some at CBS News have been concerned about what they see as signs that the news division is moving in a direction more friendly to President Donald Trump. Paramount’s merger with Skydance was approved by the administration shortly after Paramount settled the president’s lawsuit against 60 Minutes. Ellison has hired Kenneth Weinstein, former head of a conservative think tank and a Trump contributor, as an ombudsman to examine complaints about CBS News. 60 Minutes, which is two weeks into its new season, has been seeking an interview with Trump. Rather, who stepped down as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News in 2005, told The Associated Press on Monday that he did not know Weiss and hopes she gets to know the people at CBS News before making any big changes. No one has to send a memo to everyone down the line at CBS News about what is going on with journalism and this presidency, Rather said. It is obvious that there is tremendous pressure to bend the knee to the Trump administration. The fear is that this appointment is part of that overall play. Weiss has worked in opinion journalism and has little background in broadcast journalism. She has described herself politically as a centrist and wrote a column for the New York Post in 2021 headlined, 10 ways to fight back against woke culture. Writing for the liberal website the Unpopulist, Matt Johnson said that one reason for The Free Press’ popularity is that it offers intellectual reassurances to legions of anti-anti-Trump readers sophisticated conservatives who may be uneasy about Trumpism, yet want to believe that wokeness and other left-wing excesses are the primary threats to western civilization. In her memo to CBS News employees on Monday, Weiss said she stood for the same core journalistic values that have defined the profession from the beginning, including reporting on the world as it actually is and being fair, fearless, and factual. In his own letter to Paramount employees, Ellison said that media has too often become a platform for the partisanship that is tearing society apart. Today, that danger extends far beyond politics threatening the very fabric of our communities, Ellison wrote. When we reduce every issue to us vs. them or my way vs. the wrong way, we close ourselves off from listening, learning, and ultimately growing, both as individuals and as a society. I don’t pretend to have a solution to this challenge. But I do believe we each have a responsibility to do our part. In a Pew Research Center survey taken earlier this year, 56% of Americans who are Democrats or lean Democrats say they trust CBS News, while only 23% of Republicans say the same thing. Trust in is similar across all major broadcast media outlets. David Bauder, AP media writer
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Six years ago, I wrote (with colleague Jennifer Riel) a Harvard Business Review article on functional strategy. But the questions about functional strategy keep coming unabated. It is a vexatious issue for CEOs, functional leaders, and boards of directors. So, I thought it would make sense to dedicate a Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) to Functional Strategy: The Three Key Functional Leader Tasks. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. How Did We Get Here? In the business world today, there are great differences of opinion as to what functional strategy is or even whether functions should have strategies. A prevalent view holds that functions shouldnt have strategy; they just execute. In my experience, it is a hot and contentious issue. I understand why. Functions have become huge in terms of both dollars spent and people employed. In that 2019 article, we pointed out that on average the Dow Jones 30 companies spent $20B/year on their functions in 2017 and it would undoubtedly be more today. So, there is lots at stake. It was a much simpler world through the mid-1950s when companies were functionally organized. The CEO acted as the sole integrator and made the set of decisions that would currently be called strategy. Starting in the late 1950s and continuing through the 1960s and 1970s, virtually all large companies converted to business unit (BU) organizations in large part because they had diversified and coordinating across the various product lines had become ever more difficult within a functional structure. {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/martin.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/Untitled-design-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? See his weekly Medium posts at rogermartin.medium.com.","ctaText":"Sign Up","ctaUrl":"https:\/\/rogermartin.medium.com\/","theme":{"bg":"#00b3f0","text":"#000000","eyebrow":"#9aa2aa","buttonBg":"#000000","buttonText":"#ffffff"},"imageDesktopId":91412496,"imageMobileId":91412493}} It is interesting to me that two prominent business concepts, business strategy and organizing by BU, came along historically at the same time. In the 1960s, both were considered avant-garde. If you were a cool, leading-edge company, you did strategy and converted your functional organization to a BU one. Functional StrategyDownload I believe though it is speculation that because the two were linked cool ideas, when a company converted to BU structure, it naturally put the BUs in charge of strategy that was seen as new age management in the 1960s and 1970s. It made sense. BUs were mini versions of the company, and the company CEO did strategy so why not devolve strategy responsibility to BU Presidents? While it made sense, it didnt have to be so. Apple is one of the worlds giant diversified companies and of course one of the worlds most successful and as my friends Joel Podolny and Martin Hansen wrote in an interesting Harvard Business Review article, the functional heads, not the product heads, are in charge of strategy at Apple. However, Apple is a tiny exception to the rule of BUs running strategy. However, that created challenges as functions struggled to figure out how to serve multiple product masters. Plus, companies found that it was hard to maintain functional excellence and motivation when the BUs were so obviously in charge. This gave rise to another corporate concept matrix management which gained popularity in the 1970s and was considered avant-garde for a time. In this approach, neither BU nor function was singularly in charge. Rather they worked together to figure things out including strategy. Somewhat unsurprisingly, enthusiasm for this structure faded pretty quickly after it was put in practice extensively. That all brings us to today for which the dominant approach is that BUs will do strategy. In a small minority of cases, it is a collaborative task in a matrix management environment. In a miniscule proportion of cases, like Apple, functional heads have responsibility for strategy. This begs the question: what should functions do with respect to strategy in todays dominantly BU-led world? Balancing Three Tasks As context, it is important to recognize that functions cant not do strategy because strategy is what you do and since functions do some things and not others, they are making strategy choices. A function cant say that the BUs do strategy, so we dont. The only question is whether you make explicit and conscious strategy choices backed by compelling logic or just do a bunch of largely random stuff. In my view, functional leaders need to balance three strategic tasks. The three tasks are in tension, which is what makes functional strategy hard. There is no way to make the tension go away it just needs to be managed on an ongoing basis. 1) Serve Individual BU Customers The first task is to serve the functional needs of each BUs strategy. BUs are your customers, and you must be responsive to their needs. In many respects, you can think of your function supplying key Must-have Capabilities (MHC) and running important Enabling Management Systems (EMS) for the BUs. For example, at Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, the human resources (HR) function provides the Four Seasons Hotels BU (the biggest but not only BU) its key MHC long-serving hotel staff that are motivated and capable of providing the differentiated guest service central to the BU Where-to-Play/How-to-Win (WTP/HTW) strategy choice. And HR operates some of the BUs key EMS its recruiting and career management processes, for example. To produce those MHC and run those EMS for the Four Seasons Hotels BU requires upstream choices for Four Seasons HR in its WTP and HTW. HRs WTP focuses disproportionately on hiring, training, and career planning. Its HTW involves spending wildly greater resources on interviewing candidates personally rather than hiring from resumes or the Internet as Four Seasons competitors do. It has a specific EMS to carry it out, including the hotel manager conducting th final interview. At Lego, a key aspect of its HTW is bricks that are of remarkably consistent color (so that creations never look patchy) and have perfect clenching power (tight enough to not fall apart but loose enough for childrens fingers to easily separate them). Lego manufacturing function supplies the MHC for this to happen and it does so by investing disproportionately in color technology and injection molding precision. In this first task, the imperative is to understand the strategies of each BU well enough to make your own functional strategy choices aimed at producing key aspects of the BUs MHC and running supporting EMS. 2) Leverage Across BUs Current Strategies If you solely create entirely customized MHC/EMS for each BU, you will be challenged in benefiting from scale or the learning curve. That is not a disaster, but it limits the strategic value a function can add for its company. The second task is to invest in generating MHC that will be leverageable across the businesses i.e. will empower their WTP/HTWs and will enable your function to leverage scale and learning. For example, a key aspect of the HTW across all P&Gs BUs is product superiority through consumer-valued innovation. The P&G R&D function has a big role to play in that that is in delivering the MHC of superior product innovation across the businesses. P&G R&D delivers this with its functional strategy. Its Winning Aspiration is to deliver to the businesses the most valuable innovation in the industry. Its WTP choice is to invest a wildly disproportionate level of resources in what it calls products research. That is having a large cadre of engineers and scientists who spend their time interacting with consumers to figure out what innovations would be valuable to them. It is a distinct WTP choice because its competitors tend to engage in that activity with non-technical personnel within their marketing or market research functions. Its HTW is to focus its product creation R&D resources on more valuable insights (delivered by products research) at massive scale. Its MHC is to have the biggest and most experienced and talented products research capability in the industry which it has by a wide margin. And it has EMS that ensure that this unique capability is built and maintained on an ongoing basis. Because this R&D functional strategy delivers across the BUs, it enables the function to leverage massive scale and get farthest down the learning curve in the industry. 3) Creating Future Opportunities for the BUs The third task is to enable future competitive advantages for the BUs. That is to build a capability that will enable the BUs to pursue valuable strategies that they would not have been able to pursue without it. Sticking with P&G R&D, its creation of Connect & Develop (which this Harvard Business Review article chronicles) is an example of completing this third task. This initiative tapped the outside world to bring into the incredibly effective commercialization engines within the BUs double the flow of consumer-valuable inventions thus providing the BUs with more valuable innovation opportunities at a lower cost many that the BUs would have not come up with otherwise. And if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, P&G R&Ds initiative has been flattered repeatedly as innumerable companies across various industries have parroted Connect & Develop. Practitioner Insights If you are a functional leader, dont ever let anyone tell you that you dont have a strategy task, that you are just there to execute the BU strategies. Regardless of what they say, you will make strategy choices because you cant not make important choices. Your strategy job is hard. The more straightforward task is BU strategy. It has been around in full force for over half a century. There is lots of support for it, lots of case studies, lots of advisors. There is little written on functional strategy. It is doubly hard because you do have a tripartite strategy task and a tricky one because you must balance your effects and resources across the three tasks. The first task is to understand the WTP/HTW of each BU well enough to design a functional strategy that contributes by supplying each BU the MHC that needs to win. Of course, any single function cant supply all the MHC each BU needs. Each function needs to figure out where it can add value to each. If you dont accomplish this task, you will be viewed by the BUs as unresponsive and bureaucratic, and they will lobby the CEO to shift your resources into their BUs. However, if you accomplish only this first task, you will spend your functional life racing around, serving potentially disparate needs and spreading your resources thinly. Go beyond by tackling the second functional strategy task. That entails determining for your function what MHC it can contribute consistently across the BUs. What is the cross-BU throughline for your function? If you follow that throughline, you can provide more value to the BUs thanks to greater scale and faster learning. And your function will be a key contributor to winning across the BU portfolio. To attempt to keep up, each BUs competitors will need to have functions that are leveraging across a similarly broad portfolio in a similar fashion, which is unlikely. The third task, making possible a future for the BUs that wouldnt be possible otherwise is the cherry on top. There is no limit to the long-term value that a function can create, whether Connect & Develop by R&D at P&G, the Toyota Production System by manufacturing at Toyota, iconic design by the design function at Apple, or the Frito-Lay direct-story delivery system by logistics at PepsiCo. One thing to keep in mind however is that it is truly a balance. If you focus on the second and third task or even worse, exclusively the third task because they are more fun and exciting than the first task, the BUs will revolt against you. They need the first output for their strategies. If you dont give them that, they will be forced to do it themselves and will ask the company to take the resources from you to do it themselves. Doing the first task well gives you the option to do the second. Doing that well gives you an option on the third. And if you get there, you are a great functional strategist! {"blockType":"mv-promo-block","data":{"imageDesktopUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/martin.jpg","imageMobileUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2025\/09\/Untitled-design-1.png","eyebrow":"","headline":"Subscribe to Roger Martin\u0027s newsletter","dek":"Want to read more from Roger Martin? 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Empathy is not just a nice-to-have soft skillit is a foundation of how children and adults regulate emotions, build friendships, and learn from one another. Between the ages of 6 and 9, children begin shifting from being self-centered to noticing the emotions and perspectives of others. This makes early childhood one of the most important periods for developing empathy and other social-emotional skills. Traditionally, pretend play has been a natural way to practice empathy. Many adults can remember acting out scenes as doctor and patient, or using sticks and leaves as imaginary currency. Those playful moments were not just entertainmentthey were early lessons in empathy and taking someone elses perspective. But as children spend more time with technology and less in pretend play, these opportunities are shrinking. Some educators worry that technology is hindering social-emotional learning. Yet research in affective computingdigital systems that recognize emotions, simulate them or bothsuggests that technology can also become part of the solution. Virtual reality, in particular, can create immersive environments where children interact with characters who display emotions as vividly as real humans. Im a human-computer interaction scientist who studies social-emotional learning in the context of how people use technology. Used thoughtfully, the combination of VR and artificial intelligence could help reshape social-emotional learning practices and serve as a new kind of empathy classroom or emotional regulation simulator. Game of emotions As a part of my doctoral studies at the University of Florida, in 2017 I began developing a VR Empathy Game framework that combines insights from developmental psychology, affective computing and participatory design with children. At the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, I worked with their KidsTeam program, where children of 7-11 served as design partners, helping us to imagine what an empathy-focused VR game should feel like. In 2018, 15 masters students at the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy at the University of Central Florida and I created the first game prototype, Why Did Baba Yaga Take My Brother? This game is based on a Russian folktale and introduces four characters, each representing a core emotion: Baba Yaga embodies anger, Goose represents fear, the Older Sister shows happiness and the Younger Sister expresses sadness. The VR game Why Did Baba Yaga Take My Brother? is designed to help kids develop empathy. Unlike most games, it does not reward players with points or badges. Instead, children can progress in the game only by getting to know the characters, listening to their stories and practicing empathic actions. For example, they can look at the games world through a characters glasses, revisit their memories or even hug Baba Yaga to comfort her. This design choice reflects a core idea of social-emotional learning: Empathy is not about external rewards but about pausing, reflecting and responding to the needs of others. My colleagues and I have been refining the game since then and using it to study children and empathy. Different paths to empathy We tested the game with elementary school children individually. After asking general questions and giving an empathy survey, we invited children to play the game. We observed their behavior while they were playing and discussed their experience afterward. Our most important discovery was that children interacted with the VR characters following the main empathic patterns humans usually follow while interacting with each other. Some children displayed cognitive empathy, meaning they had an understanding of the characters emotional states. They listened thoughtfully to characters, tapped their shoulders to get their attention, and attempted to help them. At the same time, they were not completely absorbed in the VR characters feelings. Others expressed emotional contagion, directly mirroring characters emotions, sometimes becoming so distressed by fear or sadness that it made them stop the game. In addition, a few other children did not connect with the characters at all, focusing mainly on exploring the virtual environment. All three behaviors can happen in real life as well when children interact with their peers. These findings highlight both the promise and the challenge. VR can indeed evoke powerful empathic responses, but it also raises questions about how to design experiences that support children with different temperamentssome need more stimulation, and others need gentler pacing. AI eye on emotions The current big question for us is how to effectively incorporate this type of empathy game into everyday life. In classrooms, VR will not replace real conversations or traditional role-play, but it can enrich them. A teacher might use a short VR scenario to spark discussion, encouraging students to reflect on what they felt and how it connects to their real friendships. In this way, VR becomes a springboard for dialogue, not a stand-alone tool. We are also exploring adaptive VR systems that respond to a childs emotional state in real time. A headset might detect if a child is anxious or scared through facial expressions, heart rate, or gazeand adjust the experience by scaling down the characters expressiveness or offering supportive prompts. Such a responsive empathy classroom could give children safe opportunities to gradually strengthen their emotional regulation skills. This is where AI becomes essential. AI systems can make sense of the data collected by VR headsets, such as eye gaze, facial expressions, heart rate, or body movement, and use it to adjust the experience in real time. For example, if a child looks anxious or avoids eye contact with a sad character, the AI could gently slow down the story, provide encouraging prompts or reduce the emotional intensity of the scene. On the other hand, if the child appears calm and engaged, the AI might introduce a more complex scenario to deepen ther learning. In our current research, we are investigating how AI can measure empathy itselftracking moment-to-moment emotional responses during gameplay to provide educators with better insight into how empathy develops. Future work and collaboration As promising as I believe this work is, it raises big questions. Should VR characters express emotions at full intensity, or should we tone them down for sensitive children? If children treat VR characters as real, how do we make sure those lessons carry to the playground or dinner table? And with headsets still costly, how do we ensure empathy technology doesnt widen digital divides? These are not just research puzzles but ethical responsibilities. This vision requires collaboration among educators, researchers, designers, parents, and children themselves. Computer scientists design the technology, psychologists ensure the experiences are emotionally healthy, teachers adapt them for the curriculum, and children co-create the games to make them engaging and meaningful. Together, we can shape technologies that not only entertain but also nurture empathy, emotional regulation, and deeper connection in the next generation. Ekaterina Muravevskaia is an assistant professor of human-centered computing at Indiana University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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