NEW YORK – “This is ‘60 Minutes,’” Harry Reasoner announced on Sept. 24, 1968, introducing his new CBS News show alongside fellow correspondent Mike Wallace. “It’s kind of a magazine for television.”
He added: “We do think this is sort of a new approach.”
More than a half-century and 58 seasons later, that same term — “new approach” — is being deployed by CBS News leader Bari Weiss to explain her sweeping changes at the most renowned news program in TV history: firing the top producer and two correspondents, among others, and installing a new chief with no TV broadcast experience. Now, one of the show’s most famous faces, Scott Pelley, is gone too — fired after a tense confrontation with bosses.
“We realize, of course, that new approaches are not always instantly accepted,” Reasoner said on that night in 1968. And Weiss’ “new approach” has been…
