Bari Weiss

Bari Weiss is an American journalist, writer, and editor who has become one of the most prominent and recognizable figures in American media.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1984, Weiss had a politically engaged childhood, having an interest in cause advocacy from a young age. As a history major at Columbia University, she began showing her journalistic and entrepreneurial sides when she founded the student magazine The Current, covering politics and culture from a Jewish perspective.

In 2011, Weiss became a senior news and politics editor at the magazine Tablet. In 2013, she moved on to become the op-ed and book review editor at The Wall Street Journal before being hired by The New York Times in 2017 as the editor of the op-ed page. Brought in largely to provide some political balance to an otherwise left-wing newsroom, Weiss’s tenure at the paper was marked by constant social media controversies and internal tension with colleagues outraged at the centrist or conservative viewpoints given voice under her watch.

In a viral public resignation, Weiss left the Times in 2020, citing a toxic work environment and an organizational deference to online activists. She subsequently created her own publication in 2021, initially called Common Sense, along with its companion podcast, Honestly. The publication, covering politics and culture, took off, rising to rival legacy media outlets and being rebranded as The Free Press in 2022. By 2025, The Free Press’s reach and influence had grown so massive that Paramount acquired the paper for $150 million. As part of the deal, Weiss became the editor-in-chief of CBS News, making her one of the most powerful figures in American journalism, the first openly LGBT woman to run a mainstream news network, and one of the country’s most visible — and polarizing — political commentators and media personalities.

Weiss is also the author of the 2019 book How to Fight Anti-Semitism, inspired by the 2018 mass killing at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where Weiss herself was bat mitzvahed. Since March 2021, Weiss has worked as a regular columnist for the German daily newspaper Die Welt. In 2019, The Jerusalem Post named her one of the top ten influential Jewish people worldwide. In 2021, she co-founded a private liberal arts college in Texas called the University of Austin. Her work has earned the Bastiat Prize from the Reason Foundation, a National Book Award from the Jewish Book Council, the Daniel Pearl Award from the LA Press Club, and the Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism from the National Journalism Center.

Bari Weiss is bisexual. While at Columbia, she had an intermittent relationship with Kate McKinnon, the actress and comedian who would go on to become a regular on Saturday Night Live; she was also dating men. From 2013 to 2016, she was married to engineer Jason Kass. In 2018, she began dating former Times reporter Nellie Bowles. The two married in 2021 and have two children.

During a 2020 appearance on The View, Weiss highlighted her bisexuality, mentioning: “I’m friends with most of my exes […] and both genders too!” When asked by co-host Joy Behar to clarify what she meant, Weiss stated: “I’m bisexual.”

Despite her relationship history and self-identification as bi, Weiss has sometimes been described as — and has sometimes also called herself — lesbian or gay. While she has always been bisexual by definition, Weiss’s shifting label preference owes to the fact that she is in a long-term monogamous relationship with another woman. As a 2023 Financial Times profile explains:

Although Weiss has dated both men and women — including, in college, the Saturday Night Live actress and comedian Kate McKinnon — and was previously married to a man, Weiss describes herself as a lesbian, which she prefers to ‘gay’ as a descriptor, because it’s kind of a throwback. ‘In a historical sense, [bisexual] is an accurate term, but…I’m in a monogamous marriage with a woman … and we have a baby.’