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They turned a junk-filled L.A. yard into a weird and wonderful habitat garden

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They turned a junk-filled L.A. yard into a weird and wonderful habitat garden

If a wildlife show wanted to film in the middle of Los Angeles, Casa Apocalyptica — a dizzying jungle of native plants, abundant wildlife, soothing water and salvaged debris — would be a great place to land.

Here, slender salamanders slink through the leaf litter under robust stands of Santa Cruz Island buckwheat and California fuchsia. Dozens of bright red flame skimmer dragonflies chase around a hand-dug pond and rubble-strewn stream.

By day, birdsong is as omnipresent as Muzak at a mall; frogs serenade the night. Near the house, a couple of koi as big as human babies lurch out of their long, raised pool for a head pat and their favorite treat — slices of watermelon.

Except for a few fruit trees, almost every plant in the ground is native to California, including the Roger’s Red grapes that grow in a lush tangle over arbored patios, cooling the temperatures beneath a good 10 degrees — and all thriving without regular irrigation.

Koi fish munch on watermelon in the backyard of Chris Elwell and Kory Odell’s Mid-Wilshire home.

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An overhead view of a koi pond with greenery around it.

An overhead view of the koi pond.

And most remarkable: This whole part art, part wilderness adventure is contained in the sloping, 12,000-square-foot yard that surrounds a grand 1910 Craftsman home renovated by Chris Elwell and Kory Odell after the spouses bought the dilapidated property in 2003 in the small Mid-Wilshire neighborhood known as Oxford Square.

Their abundant native landscape growing out of 100 years of detritus-turned-garden treasures has earned them mythic status in the native plant world, and made them a must-see fixture on the Theodore Payne Foundation’s spring Native Plant Garden Tours for more than a decade.

“Casa Apocalyptica imagines our native ecology returning through the rubble after people are gone,’” the couple wrote in this year’s garden tour explainer. But nature got a lot of help from the two men, and if they’d known then how much work it would require, Elwell said, shaking his head, who knows if they would have gone ahead.

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Except, listening to them talk, it’s clearly work they relished.

They’d wanted to move into a neighborhood of old homes in 2003, but the massive Craftsman mansion they chose was in terrible shape. Bars covered every window, neither the plumbing nor the electricity worked and all the trademark natural wood had been painted white. The backyard was full of rubble.

“Our friends and family thought we were nuts. They were like, ‘Why are you putting all this time and effort into this old wreck of a house?’” Elwell said.

Two men stand in a yard, holding shovels.

Kory Odell, left, and Chris Elwell in their yard at Casa Apocalyptica.

“But Kory had grown up working on houses, and we wanted a project, and a big yard for a garden,” he added. “The house was more than we’d bargained for, but we were obsessed with building something ourselves and making it authentic to us. And I like the beauty of things that are being overlooked. I felt like there were all these cool neighborhoods right under our noses and everybody’s ignoring them.”

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The restoration took most of their free time, but it was also therapeutic, an artistic outlet after a stressful day at work, Elwell said. “But the garden sat for some time because we had so much to do on the house.”

It wasn’t until 2007 that they began on the yard, Elwell said, and both were still working full-time. Odell, now part of the executive team building the Metro Purple Line, was working with a midsize construction firm. And Elwell, now retired, was a television distribution executive with Sony Pictures.

Once again, their free time went to transformation. The front yard was a dense thicket of “freeway ice plant” that required several dumpster loads to haul away, and the bare-dirt sloping backyard was full of interesting trash that people had been dumping for 100 years — “old motorcycle parts, water heaters from the 1920s, horseshoes, lots of whiskey bottles, and lots of old cobblestones and bricks and building materials.”

To their eyes, the “junk” was weirdly wonderful, and it gave them their theme: L.A. after the apocalypse, with native plants growing in and around society’s broken remains.

A rusted metal contraption sits surrounded by plants.

A rusted metal contraption sits surrounded by plants.

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Plummer's mariposa lily.

Plummer’s mariposa lily.

A candelabra rests at the bottom of the front yard pond.

A candelabra rests at the bottom of the front yard pond.

The salvaging got to be kind of joke. Odell’s firm was doing earthquake retrofits, and during site demolitions he’d discover some new artifacts, like industrial-sized valves that might have been used in oil fields or a box of long rusty files. “So I’d be at work,” Elwell said, “and get this text with photos of something like an old radiator followed by this question: ‘TREASURE?’”

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Neighbors got into the act as well, inviting the couple over to look at things their elders had squirreled away decades earlier. “They’d say, ‘Dad hasn’t opened that door in 20 years; let’s see what’s in there.’”

The landscaping was part inspiration and part experiment, guided by fun, Elwell said, and plenty of mistakes.

One of the first was going whole hog into native plants without understanding anything about them. For instance, Odell loved the manzanitas that grow prolifically around his family’s 40-acre ranch in Shasta County.

So they got a tractor and dug one up to replant in L.A. “It looked great for about six weeks, and then it died,” Elwell said. “That’s how naive we were. So it became a research project — how do you get these things to grow?”

Their research led them to the website of Las Pilitas Nursery, a Santa Margarita grower specializing in California native plants. Bert Wilson, its founder, died in 2014, but his extensive descriptions about native plants “are super helpful to beginners,” Elwell said. “He approached it with a level of fun, writing things like, ‘I know this plant is really tough because we’ve run over it with a tractor several times and it always comes back.’”

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Many of the metal objects in the yard have been overtaken by the plant growth.

Many of the metal objects in the yard have been overtaken by the plant growth.

From there, they began frequenting the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley, one of Southern California’s premier native plant nurseries, “and as a new gardener, I just wanted to buy everything,” Elwell said. “I was treating the plants more like furniture than ecology. I’d say, ‘Oh, that looks cool.’ I was not thinking, ‘Does it really make sense to plant something that normally grows on an alpine slope at sea level in clay soil?’”

As their knowledge grew, their focus shifted to creating habitat for regional pollinators, birds and other animals. And habitats need water, a realization that had unexpected benefits.

When Odell broke his elbow in a mountain biking accident, he quickly mastered the simple rehabilitation exercises his doctor provided. So when Elwell said he wanted a pond in the front yard, Odell was immediately on board.

“He’s just the kind of person where you point out what you want to do, and he says, ‘OK, let’s go,’” Elwell said. “So he just went charging in with a pickaxe to dig out the hole and a 30-pound digging bar to move the boulders” for a roughly 8-by-12-foot pond, complete with a small waterfall fed by recirculating water (flowing through an oversized recycled spigot) and a large boulder that he drilled out in the middle to provide a gentle bathing area for tiny drinkers. Oh, and a now-large toyon and mountain mahogany on either side to provide partial shade.

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When Odell returned for a checkup a few weeks later, his doctor was amazed at how well his arm had healed. “He said, ‘How did you do that?’” Odell said, “And I said, ‘By doing everything you told me not to do.’”

They did bring in a contractor to build the spacious patios off the kitchen and living room, a long narrow koi pond with a Medusa head fountain and a wide swimming pool that follows the slope of the hill.

A fountain bearing a relief of Medusa's head pours into the koi pond in the backyard.

A fountain bearing a relief of Medusa’s head pours into the koi pond in the backyard.

Naked buckwheat's pink flowers.

Naked buckwheat.

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A view of a backyard with a large pool and lots of plants.

The backyard of the home features a swimming pool nearly enveloped by large stands of native plants.

But that’s where their “modern” landscaping stops. Instead of lawn or little potted palms around the pool, there are oversize stands of desperado sage, a fragrant hybrid between white sage and purple sage, growing so untamed they’re nearly spilling into the pool.

Odell rented an excavator to slice the bottom of the slope into a cliff, shored up by the dirt excavated for the pool, along with recycled broken concrete and other rubble. He used old railroad tracks to create steps down to the bottom of the slope. He carved out a narrow ditch between the cliff and steps, and that became a recirculating stream that flows into a little marsh full of frogs, butterflies and dragonflies.

Like their home, the yard is divided into “rooms,” or separate experiences, so sitting by the pool, you can’t see the koi pond with its restless fish or the little stream burbling just 10 feet away, or the ornate handmade pergola that offers shade at the bottom of the hill.

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Walking this yard is an adventure that reveals itself slowly. Years ago a Mama Bear manzanita (Arctostaphylos ‘Mama Bear’) finally took hold in their side yard, almost entirely covering the old driveway; further up, a hedge of citrus trees produce lemons the size of mangoes.

Plastic planters collect cobwebs on a shelf in the yard.

Plastic planters collect cobwebs on a shelf in the yard.

A dragonfly lands on a plant

A dragonfly lands on a plant near one of the yard’s water features.

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There are a few other fruit trees on the property, but mostly it’s a riot of native plants with enough variety that even in the summer, when many California native plants go dormant, the garden is full of fragrance and color — bright purple wands of woolly blue curls that smell as sweet as bubble gum; sticky yellow and red monkeyflowers, tall mallows with large flowers in orange and lavender, pinkish white bouquets on the narrow milkweed and sunflowers and fuchsias nearly ready to bloom.

Needless to say, friends and family don’t question their decision now. They deliberately designed the outdoors for entertaining, with a huge welcoming table off the kitchen and bobbing solar lanterns in the clear inviting pool. And over the years they bought the houses on either side of them, and now rent them out to a nephew and friends.

The gates between the properties are always open, and when it’s time for loved ones to gather, Elwell said, it’s only a matter of when — the “where” is never a question.

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How having zero points in tennis — or ‘love’ — came to sound so sweet

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How having zero points in tennis — or ‘love’ — came to sound so sweet

The scoreboard shows the results of the women’s singles final match between Iga Swiatek of Poland and Amanda Anisimova of the U.S. at the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London, Saturday, July 12, 2025.

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Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

Fifteen points in tennis? Nice. Thirty, 40 — even better. Advantage — that sounds good. “Love” — that also must be great, right? Well, not quite.

As the French Open rolls on and Serena Williams has announced her return to the sport, maybe you’ve been paying a little more attention to tennis. The sport’s scoring system is notably distinct, and can sometimes be hard to grasp for newcomers. But even tennis aficionados might not know why, or how, “love” became the unmistakable callout for zero points. For this installment of NPR’s Word of the Week, we’re exploring how a word that signifies trailing behind got such a sweet name.

“Love” comes from the heart — or an egg?

It’s hard to pinpoint when the first tennis ball went over the net. Tennis is a derivative of lots of other sports, such as “jeu de paume,” a handball game played in France, said JT Buzanga, the collections manager at the International Tennis Hall of Fame museum.

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But tennis became a patented, official sport in 1874, said Steve Flink, a journalist whose tennis coverage got him inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. It has retained its unique, mysterious scoring system ever since.

“By and large, the original system has held up almost entirely,” Flink said.

The use of “love” goes back to the late 18th century, said Jesse Sheidlower, a lexicographer. But it was used earlier than that in card games such as whist and bridge. Before the term made its way to tennis, the sport favored plain old “nothing,” or “nil,” he said.

Why love in the first place, though? Historians don’t really know for sure, but there are a few theories.

The French could have something to do with it. Some historians believe “love” derives from “l’oeuf,” which means “the egg” in French. Because eggs are shaped like zeros, terms such as “goose egg” and “duck’s egg” have been used in other contexts to mean zero, Sheidlower said.

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It’s also possible English speakers mispronounced l’oeuf as “love.” But Sheidlower isn’t convinced that’s the answer.

“It’s the French equivalent of an English expression. But since that expression doesn’t appear in French, the French word wouldn’t have been used,” he said.

To be sure, France has had a lot of influence on tennis culture, Buzanga said. For example, “deuce” or a game tied at 40 points, comes from the French word for “two”: “deux.” But he prefers another prominent theory: that “love” comes from the idiom “for the love of the game.” Even if a player hasn’t scored, it doesn’t matter, because their heart is in it. It’s the theory Sheidlower said is the most plausible, because the idiom was used by the English before tennis was popularized.

Another variation of the “love of the game” theory is that the word could have come from the Dutch “lof,” or “honor” — or the Latin “amare,” meaning “to love,” Flink said.

But if tennis’ “love” doesn’t come from a French word, the theory at least has a French sensibility.

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“I think the ‘for the love of the game’ is kind of romantic,” Buzanga said.

“Love” probably isn’t going anywhere

Tennis used to be a sport of leisure. The style of play has changed a lot over the years; players are more athletic and competitive, for instance, Flink said. But the rules of the sport are more steadfast, he said.

“There’s this incredible, enduring respect for tradition in tennis,” he said. “Changes are not made easily.”

There has been one major change in modern history: the tie-break. Matches can go on and on because players have to score two consecutive points to break a deuce, or by two games to break a tied set. But the onset of television meant matches would have to get shorter if the sport wanted to capture a larger audience, Flink said.

Change even came for “love.” An alternative sprouted up in the 1970s, and is still used today: “bagel,” named for its zero shape, Sheidlower said. Novices may say “zero,” and insiders will understand what they mean, but they “will needle them about it,” Flink said.

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But “love” still prevails.

“People kind of like it,” Flink said. “It’s different. Why say zero when you can say love?”

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With Highway 1 open, Big Sur braces for its busiest summer in years

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With Highway 1 open, Big Sur braces for its busiest summer in years

On a 75-mile cliff-hugging stretch of highway in California, traffic is way up, despite soaring gas prices. And locals expect the busiest summer in years.

The road is Highway 1 in Big Sur, which reopened in January after three years of repair and reconstruction following a pair of landslides. Drivers can once again embark on the state’s most famous road trip, covering the 100 miles between Cambria to the south and Carmel to the north without leaving the two-lane coastal highway. And they’re heading out in big numbers.

Caltrans estimates that as of May, Big Sur restaurant and retailer guest counts are up 40% from last year, and that northbound traffic at Ragged Point, the southern gateway to Big Sur, has risen 900% year-over-year.

People pose for photos near Bixby Bridge. Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking around the bridge.

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Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.

Safety cones prevent parking along Coast Road near the Bixby Bridge.

“Take your time,” said Kirk Gafill, co-owner of the popular Nepenthe restaurant and president of the Big Sur Chamber of Commerce, offering advice to travelers. “You’re going to be sharing the road with a number of people.”

As travelers rediscover the road, the cost of driving has been shooting skyward. California’s average gas price ($6.11 per gallon as of May 26) is up 26% from the year before. In early April, rates hit $9.99 at the isolated gas station in the Big Sur community of Gorda.

For spring and summer travelers, these numbers would seem to pose a stark question: Stay home and save money, or head for the coast because the road is finally open and it’s still cheaper than flying?

So far, the latter answer is winning big.

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Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.

Fog lingers off the coast of Highway 1.

“We are definitely seeing a huge uptick in our reservations,” said Megan Handy, assistant general manager at the upscale Treebones resort. She estimated that bookings are 30% or more ahead of last year, and rates are unchanged since then. But “it’s still not feeling super crowded, which is nice. Everything still feels kind of calm.”

But added traffic has raised some anxiety. On May 19, Monterey County’s Board of Supervisors voted to explore a 12-month ban on parking at Bixby Bridge, one of the region’s top photo spots.

Over the years, the number of cars parking near the bridge — often illegally, sometimes impeding emergency vehicles — has risen. The proposed parking moratorium won’t take effect until the supervisors discuss it further.

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Busy as things are, several business owners pointed out that many international travelers have not yet returned — perhaps because most make their plans more than six months ahead, perhaps because of global politics, perhaps a little of each.

The biggest challenge for businesses during this resurgence? “Restaffing and retaining,” said Handy at Treetops.

At Nepenthe, Gafill said his business has seen a 45% boost in guest volume since the road’s reopening. Gafill said he would have expected a 35% pickup, “simply by virtue of reopening the highway.” The additional 10%, he said, might be “all that pent-up demand,” aided by “a very beautiful and very dry winter,” followed by a mild spring.

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A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.

A lunch crowd dines at popular restaurant Nepenthe.

Another possible factor: Nobody can be sure how long the road will remain open.

To cope with the influx of people, Gafill said, “everybody is trying to recruit and retain their existing staff.”

At the Ragged Point Inn, where rates dropped as low as $149 nightly last fall, rates are back over $200 and staffers are suggesting that customers book at least six months ahead. The inn has reopened its snack bar for the first time since early 2023, and management is investing in capital upgrades and staging live music on weekends throughout the summer.

Business “is up over 100%,” said Diane Ramey, whose family owns the inn. “I know not all of our neighbors are having the same lift, but everybody is doing better.”

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Traffic approaching Bixby Bridge.

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A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.

A visitor poses in an oversized chair at Big Sur River Inn.

Even at the New Camaldoli Hermitage, a Benedictine monastery above Lucia, the road’s reopening and coming summer season have made a difference. Bookings are up an estimated 30% at the hermitage, which rent rooms and cottages (for two nights or more) to visitors who agree to its requirement of silence.

Big Sur business owners advise visitors to travel on weekdays for less traffic and the best hotel rates, and to get on the road as early as possible.

Since its opening in 1937, the highway has been vulnerable to landslides and shifting ground, operating on a longstanding cycle of landslide, closure, repair, reopening and then another landslide, or sometimes a fire. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified the Big Sur coastline as one of the most landslide-prone areas in the western United States. The 2023-2026 closure was the longest in the highway’s history.

Over time, road crews have used increasingly sophisticated strategies. In the most recent efforts, Caltrans said, it used drones to help survey the slopes and remotely operated bulldozers and excavators to reduce risks to workers.

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During the closure, no traffic was allowed on 6.8-mile span from just north of Lucia until about a mile south of the Esalen Institute. Drivers detoured inland by way of U.S. 101.

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Firings at CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ reflect the fight for media control in the age of Trump

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Firings at CBS’ ’60 Minutes’ reflect the fight for media control in the age of Trump

Correspondents of CBS’ 60 Minutes pose for a portrait in 2023. From left to right, they are Sharyn Alfonsi, L. Jon Wertheim, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega, and Anderson Cooper. Former Executive Producer Bill Owens sits on the far right. Only Wertheim, Whitaker and Stahl remain at the program.

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When CBS fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, told Pelley it was for insubordination at a staff meeting the day before.

The veteran correspondent argues he was defending the DNA of 60 Minutes and the integrity of its journalism.

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The battle royale over the network’s most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.

And given CBS’s acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.

That father and son, Larry and David Ellison, bought CBS’ parent company, Paramount, last summer. In January, they became co-owners of TikTok’s U.S. operations. Now they’re seeking approval from Trump’s regulators to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of CNN.

A glamorous show shorn, for now, of most its stars

CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.

CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.

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But the specifics of this individual episode matter — for 60 Minutes, CBS, its audience of millions, and even the news business itself.

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The program has been the most glamorous post in broadcast news. The correspondents are the stars of the show. And now, there are just three of them.

Anderson Cooper left last month, concerned over the direction of the network’s coverage. Last week was a virtual bloodbath: correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. So were a producer and two show executives — including Tanya Simon, a longtime staffer who had stepped up as executive producer when her predecessor resigned in protest before the Ellisons’ takeover.

With Pelley’s ouster, only correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim remain. Now they are considering whether to resign, according to two associates with knowledge.

Their brand-new boss, Bilton, was previously a tech reporter for The New York Times and an investigative reporter for Vanity Fair. He executive-produced a documentary for Netflix about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin and has been a producer on several other films.

Notably, he has no experience in television news.

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Neither does Bari Weiss, whom David Ellison installed as the network’s editor in chief last October. The Ellisons also bought her center-right views-and-news site, The Free Press.

She has maintained that the network of Walter Cronkite needs a makeover for the digital moment. She has also contended for years that CBS, along with the rest of mainstream media, is too reflexively anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and too woke.

A rejection of CBS News executives’ overtures

The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.

The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.

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Bilton attempted to set a conciliatory tone at Monday’s meeting — his first with the show. Pelley, a formidable veteran correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, wasn’t having it.

Pelley called Bilton unwelcome and unqualified. And Pelley said that Weiss was attempting to “murder” the program.

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In firing Pelley on Tuesday, Bilton said the journalist had hijacked the meeting and rejected overtures to work constructively through their differences. (NPR obtained a copy of the firing notice.) Bilton wrote that Pelley’s “antipathy to the future of the show came through loud and clear.”

In his own statement late Tuesday evening, shared with NPR, Pelley accused CBS’s new news leadership of killing 60 Minutes‘ DNA and pushing him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “to include assertions that are unverified.”

The accusations, to which CBS has not yet responded, echo those made by Alfonsi and Vega, the two correspondents fired last week.

Earlier this year, Alfonsi publicly complained after Weiss held one of her stories at the last minute, and kept it frozen for weeks, demanding an on-camera interview with a Trump White House official that never played out. It ran, unchanged from the intended version, with additional statements from the administration tacked on to the end.

After being fired, Vega said in a statement obtained by NPR that her team had “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.”

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“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both censorship and self-driven” Vega continued. “It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”

Weiss previously rejected Alfonsi’s and Vega’s allegations. (CBS said Vega’s claims, for example, were “not based in reality” while expressing appreciation for her work.)

Weiss and Bilton say digital threat requires a 60 Minutes overhaul now

In a meeting this morning, Weiss said that Pelley chose his own path — that is, to be fired rather than to find a way to work through his concerns, according to attendees. The network and Weiss have not yet publicly addressed Pelley’s accusations of interference. 

Bilton and Weiss say they respect the show’s traditions, its accomplishments and its legacy of enterprise reporting, extended interviews and visual storytelling. It rose in the ratings 9% over the past season under Simon.

The two news leaders say, however, 60 Minutes needs to be overhauled before it becomes increasingly irrelevant in the era of streamers and other sources of news, information and entertainment in the digital age.

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Interviews with 12 current and former CBS News staffers, from producers to executives, suggest great reservations and suspicions remain about Weiss’ judgment and her ability to handle the prominent and even famous journalists on whom her division relies.

Weiss had initially sought to reinvent the CBS Evening News, dropping a two-anchor format that had sagged in the ratings. Cooper turned down Weiss’ overtures to anchor it and left the network altogether, concerned about her approach, according to associates. (They spoke on condition of anonymity because Cooper has not chosen to speak publicly on the matter.)

David Ellison became chairman and CEO of CBS' parent company, Paramount, after buying it last year.

David Ellison became chairman and CEO of CBS’ parent company, Paramount, after buying it last year.

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The ratings have continued to sag under new anchor Tony Dokoupil. And some CBS journalists, including producers who have left the Evening News, have publicly accused Weiss of making editorial decisions driven by politics. She has rejected those claims.

The decision to take on overhauling two key shows — one listing, one highly profitable, both high profile — carries significant risks for Weiss and the network, even apart from other considerations.

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But the Ellisons’ presence cannot be ignored.

When Shari Redstone was negotiating the sale of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, to the Ellisons’ Skydance Media last year, the network announced the end of Stephen Colbert’s late night show. He had been one of the president’s most biting and acerbic critics.

David Ellison also made a series of concessions directly to Trump’s chief broadcast regulator, Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr, gutting CBS’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and appointing a conservative ombudsman to field complaints of bias against its news reporting.

Carr and other regulators approved the Paramount deal last summer.

The accommodations echo those made by other media titans.

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Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos remade the editorial pages of the Washington Post, which he owns, into a far more hospitable zone for Trump at the outset of his second term. So did Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a noted medical device inventor. Amazon and Blue Origin have multi-billion dollar contracts with the federal government. Soon-Shiong’s medical research firm routinely has patent applications up for review with federal regulators. One was approved Tuesday.

The Ellisons are hoping to win approval from federal regulators next month for their purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal valued at more than $110 billion. It would include Warner Bros. Studio, HBO and CNN, among other properties.

As Weiss routs CBS News’ old guard, the question of what role she might play at CNN — and what changes that portends at CBS — hangs over journalists at the two networks. The fate of 60 Minutes serves as a high-stakes case study for both.

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