The New York Times is reportedly losing one of its best-known Opinion voices as columnist Ross Douthat departs the newspaper to join CBS’ 60 Minutes, where he will serve as a correspondent as part of a newly announced expansion of the program’s reporting team.
The move was announced Tuesday by 60 Minutes executive producer Nick Bilton in an email to staff obtained by Mediaite. The announcement was also shared through the news magazine’s social media accounts.
Alongside Douthat, Bilton revealed that Trevor Phillips will join the program as Senior Global Affairs Correspondent, Sebastian Junger will become a contributor, and Gianna Toboni will serve as a CBS News National Correspondent.
In his message to staff, Bilton described the additions as the beginning of several major announcements for the long-running news program.
“Today, I am pleased to share some great news, and the first of many exciting announcements to come,” Bilton wrote. “An exceptional lineup of journalists will be joining 60 Minutes, carrying on its tradition of fearless, independent and impartial reporting. I can’t wait for them to get started.”
Bilton reserved especially high praise for Douthat, calling the longtime New York Times columnist one of the country’s leading public intellectuals.
“Ross is one of the preeminent public intellectuals in America today, a thinker of uncommon rigor and a journalist of deep empathy,” Bilton wrote.
He highlighted the broad range of subjects Douthat has explored throughout his career, including politics, religion, culture and his own experience with Lyme disease, saying those writings reflected both intellectual depth and compassion.
According to Bilton, Douthat has a unique ability to make controversial subjects accessible while portraying people and differing viewpoints with nuance. He added that Douthat would bring that same curiosity and perspective to 60 Minutes and will be based in New York.
Bilton also praised Gianna Toboni, noting that she spent a decade as a senior correspondent for VICE News and VICE on HBO before most recently working as a reporter at CNN.
He described Toboni as a journalist with “extraordinary range,” pointing to her interviews with members of ISIS, reporting on cartel violence in Mexico, and coverage of complex social and cultural issues, including mass shootings in the United States and the death penalty.
Trevor Phillips, who will be based in London, was described by Bilton as one of the United Kingdom’s most respected and trusted journalists, recognized for asking difficult questions and holding those in positions of power accountable. Bilton said Phillips would bring that same commitment to pursuing the truth to the broadcast.
Bilton also reflected on Sebastian Junger’s body of work, recalling the impact of The Perfect Storm, which he said helped define a powerful style of reported nonfiction and established Junger as a major storytelling talent. He noted that Junger followed the bestselling book with six more bestselling titles while also building a career as a documentarian, broadcast journalist and war correspondent.
Meanwhile, The New York Times informed its Opinion staff of Douthat’s departure in a separate email that was also shared with Mediaite.
The newspaper praised Douthat’s 17-year tenure, saying his thousands of columns left an “indelible mark” through carefully constructed arguments that encouraged even skeptical readers to continue engaging with his ideas.
The Times noted that Douthat joined the Opinion section in 2009 at the age of 29, making him one of the youngest columnists in the paper’s history. The message praised his writing style and credited him with presenting what it described as a religiously serious and intellectually restless conservatism while writing on subjects ranging from the Catholic Church to the populist right. The newspaper concluded by describing him as someone who was sometimes right early, wrong honestly, and “never, not once, boring.”