Jeff Fager's ouster puts a spotlight on the divide between 60 Minutes and CBS News

The New York Times

60 Minutes staffers fear that Fager's exit will result in the folding of the newsrooms of CBS News with the iconic newsmagazine, which operate out of separate buildings. 60 Minutes servers are inaccessible to CBS News staffers, who must ask permission and use the show's watermark if they want to show its footage -- "as it if it were a rival station," reports The New York Times' John Koblin and Michael M. Grynbaum. "In its half-century on the air," they report, "60 Minutes has never been at home within the larger CBS News family," As former CBS News president Andrew Heyward explains, "the people at 60 Minutes were paid more, they had longer time to work on stories, they got incredible recognition in terms of ratings and prestige, so naturally the people in the trenches would sometimes be resentful of that. It was like a hit TV show that happened to be at CBS News.” 60 Minutes staffers fear that CBS News president David Rhodes -- whom Fager hired from Bloomberg News in 2011 -- would dismantle what they consider an institution. "Mr. Rhodes so rarely visits the 60 Minutes office that one staff member likened his appearance there on Wednesday, to discuss Mr. Fager’s firing, to the sighting of a unicorn," reports The Times. "Likewise, 60 Minutes officials are infrequent attendees at Mr. Rhodes’s editorial meetings for senior producers every Monday morning. So when he did show up, many staff members reacted in anger." ALSO: 60 Minutes staffers coined "Fager World" to describe Fager's happy bubble.