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Four years later, when Thompson stepped down and passed the baton to his top lieutenant,

  Four years later, when Thompson stepped down and passed the baton to his top lieutenant,  Meredith Kopit Levien, the Times had surpassed 5 million paying digital readers, a number that has since risen to roughly 9 million. Moreover, digital revenue had already climbed north of $800 million, coming in a year ahead of schedule on a goal Thompson had set in 2015 of doubling the company’s digital coffers by 2020. All of which is to say, Thompson emerged from his eight-year CEO-ship as the leader who oversaw the Times’ evolution into an exemplar of the digital-media age. In theory, that should sound like music to the ears of the 4,000-odd employees who work for CNN, where Thompson was crowned chairman and CEO on Wednesday morning. In addition to his Times stewardship, the announcement from parent company Warner Bros.  Discovery heralded the London-born 66-year-old’s achievements during his eight-year run as director general of the BBC: presiding over one of the world’s large...
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Will Mark Thompson Be CNN’s Magic Bullet?: “If He Can’t Make This Work, Then No One Can”

  Will Mark Thompson Be CNN’s Magic Bullet?: “If He Can’t Make This Work, Then No One Can” During the South by Southwest festival in March 2016, I was at a crowded shindig on the back patio of Easy Tiger, an Austin beer garden, chatting with Mark Thompson, then the CEO of The New York Times, which had commandeered the venue for the weekend.  Thompson didn’t look like some corporate square infiltrating the boozy masses. He was dressed down, with his sleeves rolled up and a glass of red wine in hand, merrily imbibing with his colleagues.  It had been about five years since the Times began charging readers for digital content—a pivotal strategy kickstarted under Thompson’s predecessor, Janet Robinson—and at the time, more than a million readers had gotten on board with the effort. I asked Thompson how many additional readers he thought could be convinced to pay for the Times on their laptops and smartphones . “I don’t see why we shouldn’t aspire to a digital-subscriber count...
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