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Bari Weiss is seeking a valuation of more than $200mn for The Free Press amid talks over the sale of her “anti-woke” media start-up.
Weiss has met with David Ellison, the incoming owner of CBS News, over a potential deal to sell the three-year-old business, according to several people familiar with the matter.
Ellison’s Hollywood studio Skydance has agreed to buy Paramount, the owner of CBS. Provided that deal gets cleared by regulators, Ellison — the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison — wants to position The Free Press alongside CBS News, the people said.
Weiss is seeking a valuation of between $200mn and $250mn for The Free Press, the people said, only three years after starting the venture.
The former New York Times journalist, known for attacking liberal institutions and “cancel culture,” has built a loyal following in Maga circles since leaving the publication in acrimonious circumstances in 2020.
The Free Press, which also hosts events and podcasts, has held talks with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp about potential collaborations, according a person familiar with the talks, but they added that these were separate to any takeover discussions.
Weiss has won over Ellison partly by taking a pro-Israel stance, according to people familiar with the matter, as well as her ability to build a younger, digitally savvy audience that has traditionally been difficult to reach by networks such as CBS. The talks with Ellison were first reported by The New York Times.
Weiss’s effort to sell her media group comes a year after raising $15mn from investors at a $100mn valuation, the Financial Times previously reported.
A sale at a $250mn valuation would be roughly the same price that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paid to buy the Washington Post in 2013, not adjusted for inflation.
The Free Press has about 1.25mn subscribers on Substack, with about 155,000 of them paying, according to a recent Axios report. Annual subscriptions cost $100, implying subscription revenues of about $15.5mn.
Weiss resigned from her role as a columnist at The New York Times in 2020, alleging at the time that her colleagues had “bullied” her over her political views.
Since setting out on her own, Weiss has successfully positioned herself as an alternative to mainstream publications such as The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, as well as rightwing outlets such as Fox News.
The Free Press, which started out as a Substack newsletter in 2021, attracted seed investment from venture capitalists including Marc Andreessen and David Sacks.
At the start of the year Weiss hired former Wall Street Journal journalist and Lazard banker Dennis Berman as The Free Press’s president and publisher to help lead its expansion.
Weiss, Ellison and News Corp all declined to comment.
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