Starting a new job is never easy, but Nick Bilton, the new executive producer of 60 Minutes, has had an extra rough first two weeks after firing veteran correspondent Scott Pelley on Tuesday. Lesley Stahl, Jon Wertheim and Bill Whitaker released a joint memo today condemning the firings but declaring their intention to remain in post.

CBS’s management has been accused of ignoring the demands of the (dwindling) core viewership and making top-down political changes to drag the station’s coverage to the right. In that spirit, Cockburn is offering Bilton some suggestions of feet to fill Pelley’s shoes.

Thanks for reading Cockburn’s Diary from The Spectator. Subscribe to receive new posts and support his work.

The obvious choice, given the CBS leadership’s penchant for raiding new Ellison acquisition the Free Press for talent. Few people would do a better job of toeing the party line. She was widely and unfairly mocked for filming herself and not the wider room during the WHCD gunman debacle, but that’s because she knows she belongs in front of the camera, not behind it.

If Bilton is dedicated to embracing a younger audience, (Pew Research Center reports most CBS viewers are almost 60), he should consider 23-year-old Nick Shirley, whose low-research, high-reward YouTube videos about fraud in Minnesota have already landed him in the White House and in the headlines. An intellectual titan.

She lost her job at New York magazine after insinuating a “personal relationship” with RFK Jr., and was later accused by her ex of having an affair with former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford. Both older men were subjects of Nuzzi profiles. But those scandals could be assets on her résumé for 60 Minutes if, as one X commenter suggests, “at the end of each episode she marries the subject of the interview.”

The disturbing truth about the National Association of Muslim Police

Why can’t Elon Musk leave Britain alone?

The three faces of Andy Burnham

The Post Millennial editor-at-large is a longstanding friend of CBS chief Bari Weiss and rose to prominence for his video reporting on antifa in his home city of Portland. Guaranteed virality. Basically the proto-Nick Shirley. Ngo further questions!

60 Minutes would be a solid........

© The Spectator