Bari Weiss was born on 25 March 1984 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
She is an American journalist, writer, editor and media executive who has served as editor-in-chief of CBS News since 2025.
She grew up in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, the eldest of four sisters, in a Jewish family; her parents, Lou and Amy Weiss, ran a successful flooring and furniture business.
Weiss attended Community Day School and Shady Side Academy, had her bat mitzvah at the Tree of Life Synagogue, and spent a gap year in Israel before studying history at Columbia University, from which she graduated in 2007.
She is married to journalist Nellie Bowles and they have two children.
Siblings
Bari is the oldest of four sisters.
Her siblings are Casey Weiss, who has worked as head of school at Community Day School in Pittsburgh; Molly Weiss Richter; and Suzy Weiss.
The sisters grew up in a household that emphasized debate, Jewish tradition and community involvement.
Also Read: Mike Rogers Siblings: Getting to Know Bill and Jim Roger
Career
After college Weiss worked at Haaretz and The Forward and became a senior editor at the Jewish magazine Tablet.
From 2013 to 2017 she served as an op-ed and book-review editor at The Wall Street Journal.
In 2017 she joined The New York Times as a staff editor and writer in the opinion section, where she covered culture and politics and often took positions that placed her at odds with parts of the newsroom.
She resigned in 2020 in a widely publicized open letter criticizing the paper’s internal culture.
She then launched a newsletter that evolved into The Free Press, a digital publication focused on independent journalism, and hosted the podcast Honestly.
In 2025, following the acquisition of The Free Press, she was appointed editor-in-chief of CBS News. She is also the author of the 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism.
Accolades
Weiss has received the Reason Foundation’s Bastiat Prize in 2018 for writing that demonstrates the importance of freedom, a National Jewish Book Award in 2019 for How to Fight Anti-Semitism, the Los Angeles Press Club’s Daniel Pearl Award for Courage and Integrity in Journalism in 2021, and recognition for investigative work connected to the Twitter Files.
These honors reflect her contributions to opinion journalism and her advocacy on issues of free expression and antisemitism.
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