The media-industrial complex’s East Coast division, based in New York City, has been mesmerized by the ascendancy of Bari Weiss as Editor-in-Chief of CBS News. We can understand why that would be the case — she represents an easy target, having been given ultimate control of the legendary “House that Murrow built.” In her role, she reports directly to Paramount (A Skydance Corporation) CEO David Ellison.

This, despite a resume that did not include any experience working in Television News.

So we wonder whether the past weekend revealed Ms. Weiss’s primary interest in the opportunity Ellison offered her?

Was it the opportunity to shift the perceived editorial and political direction of the network (and also help placate the "critic-in-chief" in the Oval Office)?

Maybe.

But we wonder if the main appeal of her new job might be a little simpler? Perhaps just wanting to be on television herself?

We now know, and indeed could have predicted, that last Saturday’s CBS News “Town Hall” with Erika Kirk would be no ratings blockbuster. The widow of the assassinated Charlie Kirk was definitely a newsworthy person to interview. But rather than turn the moderator’s role over to any of her experienced anchors and reporters, including Tony Dokoupil, her newly announced anchor for “The CBS Evening News,” Weiss decided to take the on-camera assignment for herself.

Ostensibly, this move was intended to signal CBS News's new political posture. A posture more aligned with Weiss’s own politics, which she once described to Joe Rogan as being a “left-leaning centrist.” Other observers would label her positions as being mainly Conservative.

Whatever the characterization, Weiss’s politics have been on display since her very public departure from The New York Times in 2020, where she had been an opinion page writer for three years. That post followed a four-year stint at The Wall Street Journal as an op-ed and book review editor. She left the WSJ to follow her deputy editor, Bret Stephens, when he moved to the Times. Weiss and her spouse, Nellie Bowles, launched The Free Press on Substack in 2021.

Paramount would pay $150 million for “The Free Press” to install the 41-year-old Weiss as the head of CBS News.

Some 75-plus years earlier, a young New York City native was leading a start-up journalism enterprise in the very medium that Bari Weiss is now trying to master. At 20 years old, he would go from being an intern to becoming the first news director and on-air anchor for Florida’s first television station, WTVJ.

His name was Ralph Renick.

From the station’s debut in 1949 to his final newscast in 1985, Renick would become not only the anchor of South Florida’s top-rated newscast for over 35 years, but also assume the position of the station’s news director in 1953. That dual role wasn’t unprecedented in the early years of local television news departments, but what was highly unusual was that, as News Director, Renick didn’t report to the station’s General Manager, but directly to Colonel Mitchell Wolfson, the Founder and President of Wometco Enterprises, the owner of WTVJ, then the CBS affiliate in South Florida.

When the station began doing nightly editorials in 1957, it was Renick who wrote and delivered them on the air. In historical hindsight, many of Renick's editorials could be considered conservative. After Col. Wolfson died in 1983, Wometco was acquired by the investment firm of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) for $1 billion, then the largest leveraged buyout in U.S. history. Under KKR, Ralph Renick saw his authority slowly diminished and his ratings superiority ultimately toppled by cross-town rival WPLG and Ann Bishop, the first female to co-anchor the 6 & 11 pm newscasts in a major market.

To his credit, Ralph Renick was not only a TV news legend but also an innovator. In 1967, he would hire the nation’s first female sportscaster. A year later, he would hire the first black reporter to work on-air in the Miami market. He would push the station into the electronic news age, making WTVJ the first South Florida station to shoot videotape instead of film and later deploy the market’s first live ENG truck. He was also a long-time supporter of the Radio-Television News Directors Association, serving as its President in 1959, and was a regular at the association’s annual conventions until the 1980s.

In 1984, the association honored Ralph Renick with its Paul White Award, named for the man who would become the first news director of the Columbia Broadcasting System in 1933 and lead CBS News for the following 13 years. 

Renick stunned colleagues and viewers alike when he suddenly announced his immediate departure from WTVJ at the end of an edition of “The Ralph Renick Report” in April of 1985. Six weeks later, Renick announced he would be a Democratic candidate in the upcoming 1986 race for Governor of Florida.

Six months in, after reportedly spending $100,000 of his own money on the effort, he pulled out of the race.

Renick briefly returned to television in 1988, this time for WCIX (now WFOR) as a commentator on that station’s nightly newscasts. Two years later, Renick would retire as his health began to fail. He would pass away in July of 1991, from complications of hepatitis and liver disease. His death was the lead story on every local newscast that night.

After his brief foray into politics, Renick said in a 1986 interview with The Sun-Sentinel, "News shouldn’t just be the day’s sensation, it should be a chronicle of events. All those stories that news consultants call ‘boring government stuff’ are important.” He would add this bit of wisdom from leading a TV newsroom for so many years:

“Journalists tend to feel they know more than the people they’re reporting on."

We figure it’s a safe bet that Bari Weiss has probably never heard the name Ralph Renick or his famous nightly sign-off that graced the airwaves of South Florida for over three decades: “Good Night, and may the good news be yours.”

At the end of his final newscast in 1985, he would add three more words: “...and hopefully mine."

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One quick note about our holiday publishing schedule: We plan to take next week off for our holiday break. Should major news about the news warrant, we’ll follow the old radio proclamation of “When news breaks out, we break in.” Otherwise, we wish you all the best no matter which holidays you celebrate. And as is our tradition, a special thanks to all of you who will be working and keeping the news covered while your colleagues are off on holiday. We appreciate you.