The Interview: Scott Pelley on the Bari Weiss Era and His Last Days at ‘60 Minutes’ (gift link) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/07/magazine/scott-pelley-interview.html?unlocked_article_code=1.oVA.vWwd.DRP_TXbacMln&smid=url-share // Putting any political viewpoint aside, the idea of management "interfering" with the journalism "product" is such a bizarre concept. There is a good management and organization lesson in this interview on how not to be an employee (putting aside the lesson that the first thing to not do is to do this all in public) and how organization transitions always work. The drama we're seeing is pretty routine except for the part where it is all happening in public.

Where is the line of management v line in such a system? Doesn't the writer getting direction from a producer feel like "management" to that writer, especially if maybe the producer was a former photographer or worked in a different outlet? This feels like the idea that we can have a government made out of professional career bureaucrats that are free from opinions on policy? There are none just as there is no line where talented creative people enjoy having managers muck with their work.

I find this idea that there is some line in journalism where there can be no "interference" in a product akin to saying "there can be no management involvement." Lord knows I personally was known as a manager that drew a hard line above me about such interference. At the same time I also held myself to a non-interference standard. One story you can read about here is a complete product being upended (Office XP while the world was changing to SaaS) -> https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/070-officenot

That said it is also absurd to think that this is an immoral or otherwise illegitimate role for management. It is frustrating. It can seem random. It might even seem poorly informed and damaging. But it is not itself news or impossible to understand. News seems to couch this in "injecting bias" but in the rest of business we call this "management" or "strategy." I found this part interesting because Pelley basically says they were already making an effort to show sides but dismisses the potential that they did not do so enough. Taking out the polarized political views, it sounds like every business discussion over dumb corporate strategy where the CEO just tells you "yes I see you are supporting the initiative, but we need even more." It shouldn't be surprising even a little bit that maybe, just maybe, they were not doing "enough" to show the side they disagree with?

All org structures have the tension over managers interfering with the product output. The line over interference is tricky and even more so when, as absolutely happens, there is a change in background or skill sets as one marches up the org chart.

What it seems is really going is that the management chain of CBS/60 was a monoculture. Even if there were battles (as described in the story) they were within a narrow range of an established set of cultural "norms."

Anyone who has ever "inherited" a product team of any kind faces both of these challenges: • You come in with skills some people on the team don't have and you lack skills that others on the team have. These could be hard skills (writing v photographing v editing v producing). You could have experience at different scale (big v small, local v global). You could come from different domains (politics v sports v business). • You come with a different culture and with that you bring a different set of soft priorities. Almost always this is precisely why someone new is brought into a management role. The operation is caught in some rut and the owner/CEO is trying to get out of that rut. Many times the need to do this is either not seen by the operation or they just disagree. When the existing operation is a monoculture then of course "everyone" sees the change as unnecessary or usually "destructive."

Both of these are on display in this article and broader transition of CBS.

I wrote about my own experience in this regard when I moved from Office to Windows. In the 60 Minutes case you see a lot of "no experience in broadcast" and "no experience operating at scale" and "doesn't understand culture". Each of those were parallels I experienced relentlessly.

While Microsoft is one company, the culture, product, and businesses of Office and Windows were almost like two different companies. Putting an Office person in the leadership role of Windows was not just culturally heretical but it was irresponsible and was going to "kill" Windows.

It was obvious Windows was previously successful in ways no other product in history had succeeded (and so was Office.) It was also obvious to any objective observer that Windows needed to do a bunch of things differently. The situation with 60 Minutes is equally obvious, except to Pelley apparently, though he admits at the very least there were financial difficulties but apparently those had nothing to do with the product they were making.

I was told I could never understand a product as complex as Windows because Office was simple. I was told I could not manage a team the size of Windows. I was told understanding the Windows product was something I wasn't capable of. One person even told me that unlike Office, it isn't possible for Windows to ship on a fixed schedule and attempting to do so would result in a bad product. I could go on and on. In fact I did -- that was the primary reason I wrote both books, One Strategy and Hardcore Software.

There are many things Nick can do to make this transition work. But there are even more things the 60 minutes team can do. Everything starts with an acknowledgment that an operation has a structure and accountability that needs to be respected. If you don't agree with that basic concept then the operation is not for you. And if you view your role to be "the resistance" or "nothing can change because we did everything right" then that just won't work.

If there is one post to read, then check this one out -> https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/085-the-memo-part-1.