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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,<\/strong> then the CEO of The New York Times,<\/em> which had commandeered the venue for the weekend. Thompson didn\u2019t 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<\/em> began charging readers for digital content\u2014a pivotal strategy kickstarted under Thompson\u2019s predecessor, Janet Robinson<\/strong>\u2014and 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<\/em> on their laptops and smartphones. \u201cI don\u2019t see why we shouldn\u2019t aspire to a digital-subscriber count of many millions,\u201d he told<\/a> me.<\/p>\n Four years later, when Thompson stepped down<\/a> and passed the baton to his top lieutenant, Meredith Kopit Levien,<\/strong> the Times<\/em> had surpassed<\/a> 5 million paying digital readers, a number that has since risen to roughly 9 million<\/a>. Moreover, digital revenue had already climbed north of $800 million, coming in a year ahead of schedule on a goal<\/a> Thompson had set in 2015 of doubling the company\u2019s 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<\/em>\u2019 evolution into an exemplar of the digital-media age.<\/p>\n 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<\/em> stewardship, the announcement from parent company Warner Bros. Discovery heralded the London-born 66-year-old\u2019s achievements during his eight-year run as director general of the BBC: presiding over one of the world\u2019s largest newsrooms while managing an array of national and international TV, radio, and digital assets; leading the development of the pioneering streaming service BBC iPlayer; expanding web and smartphone services; and overseeing coverage of big-ticket news stories like the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2012 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n \u201cThere isn\u2019t a more experienced, respected, or capable executive in the news business today than Mark,\u201d said WBD CEO David Zaslav<\/strong> in an accompanying statement. \u201cHis strategic vision, track record in transformational leadership, and sheer passion for news make him a formidable force for CNN and journalism at this pivotal time.\u201d<\/p>\n From what I\u2019m told, Thompson\u2019s name was at the top of Zaslav\u2019s list pretty much right away after he fired Chris Licht<\/strong> in early June. In high-level strategy meetings about CNN, there\u2019s been an acknowledgment that the network needs to \u201cdo what the Times<\/em> did\u201d in transforming an iconic legacy news brand. So why not get the guy who stewarded the Times<\/em> through that very era of change? As a source close to the process put it, \u201cHe should have been the choice in the first place.\u201d (For what it\u2019s worth, Thompson\u2019s former partners in crime at the Times<\/em> sang his praises; Levien called him \u201ca remarkable leader\u2026intently focused on talent development,\u201d and publisher A.G. Sulzberger<\/strong> said, \u201cCNN is lucky to have him.\u201d)<\/p>\n In the days after Ben Smith<\/strong> first reported<\/a> on August 23 that Thompson was a leading candidate\u2014surprising employees and observers alike, who expected Zaslav wasn\u2019t in a rush to install a new general after Licht\u2019s ill-fated year on the job\u2014it was tricky to gauge how CNN\u2019s long-suffering worker bees felt about the prospect of yet another shake-up in the C-suite. On the one hand, Thompson looked good on paper, a seasoned CEO who (unlike Licht, primarily known as a celebrated producer) had managed sprawling media organizations and knew his way around a complex P&L. On the other hand, I got a sense that the appetite for boat-rocking was low, and that people seemed perfectly happy with the interim leadership quartet of David Leavy,<\/strong> Amy Entelis,<\/strong> Virginia Moseley,<\/strong> and Eric Sherling,<\/strong> who will all report to Thompson once he begins in October.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, however, I picked up on some early enthusiasm for the new boss. \u201cI woke up feeling very encouraged,\u201d said one CNN journalist. \u201cHe seems like the transformational leader we need at exactly this moment.\u201d In the words of another, \u201cHe has led two enormous, complicated, world-class news organizations, both of which were highly scrutinized, and unlike others in those roles, he left them in better shape than he found them. You have to think, if he can\u2019t make this work, then no one can.\u201d<\/p>\n Making it work will involve the tall order of reviving CNN\u2019s ratings, stemming a drop in profits, and managing the decline of the network\u2019s traditional television business while finessing its shift to streaming. CNN took a big step in that direction last week with the announcement of CNN Max on WBD\u2019s Max service, which will be a mix of certain shows broadcast live from the main feed and programming developed exclusively for the new platform. Then there\u2019s the more fundamental task of bringing sustained order and morale to a company that has effectively been in a state of turmoil ever since Jeff Zucker<\/strong> was shown the door almost 19 months ago for having an undisclosed romantic relationship with a fellow CNN executive.<\/p>\n Thompson has already been calling around to certain figures within the organization, and he will begin making the rounds in person in the coming weeks, starting with the CNN command center at Hudson Yards on Manhattan\u2019s far West Side. In a memo to employees on Wednesday, he wrote, \u201cI\u2019ve spent most of the past twenty years figuring out with colleagues at some of the world\u2019s other great news operations not just how to survive the revolution, but to thrive in it and gain new audiences and revenue streams. I aim to do the same at CNN. It won\u2019t be my<\/em> plan that wins the day but our<\/em> plan, the plan we devise and implement together.\u201d<\/p>\n For Thompson, running CNN may not be the swan song he expected. As his Times<\/em> tenure was winding down, there were rumors he was interested in the presidentship of Magdalen College at Oxford, his alma mater (though he was a Merton College guy). Most recently, he\u2019s been chairman of the board at Ancestry, the online genealogical service.<\/p>\n