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CNN‘s new chairman and CEO Mark Thompson officially started in his job leading the network on Monday, telling staffers in an internal video message that the news organization needed to make advancements in digital and that conventional TV “can no longer define us.”
“It’s one platform in a growing number of platforms,” Thompson said, according to CNN’s Oliver Darcy and confirmed by a network source.
Thompson also said that while recent new offerings, like CNN Max, were “encouraging developments,” the network was “still nowhere near ready for the future.” He said that TV was still “too dominant at CNN and digital too marginal.”
Thompson cited his experience at The New York Times, where he served as CEO from 2012 to 2020. The Times boosted subscriptions in the transition to digital.
Thompson also made reference to concerns that have pervaded the network since Discovery took over Warner Media, essentially telling staffers not to obsess too much over whether the network is too centrist or too much to the left.
He also said that they should not get “distracted by complicated arguments about balance or whataboutism or false equivalency.”
“Let’s cover political news proportionately and fairly, but not be frightened of our own shadows,” he said.
He praised the staff as “a group of tough and amazingly focused and enthusiastic people,” who “still believe in CNN and its mission 100%, people who want to get on with the future, and so do I.”
In recent weeks, Thompson has been meeting with staffers at CNN offices, getting a sense of the mood of the newsroom after a year of tumult. He is succeeding Chris Licht, who was let go in June after just more than a year in the job.
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