Mark Thompson The New York Times' first outsourced CEO

 

Mark Thompson:

 

Mark Thompson, I got a call from him who was the president of the British public broadcaster BBC. The call was from the New York Times in the United States.

“We are hiring a new CEO. Would you like to be a candidate?” It didn't take long for Thompson's answer.

"no."

Thompson had never worked for a newspaper. He never worked in America.

He was a broadcaster executive who was a well-established broadcast journalist at the broadcast station.

But he hung up the phone and thought for a moment. He was a longtime New York Times addict.

He always thought the New York Times had the best newsroom.

So he changed his mind and he met the people of the Sulzberger family, who owned the board and the New York Times. they said

“I think the time has come for a fundamental change. We will support radical change to the fullest extent possible.”

Thompson trusted them. And so the New York Times.

The first outside CEO of The New York Times:

I want to become the CEO. Print media all over the world are struggling, and the idea that where there is a challenge there is an opportunity played a part in that decision.

He was the first outside CEO of the New York Times, founded in 1851. It was in November 2012

The New York Times was feeling a sense of crisis.

As with all newspapers, the number of people looking for paper newspapers is declining, while digital subscribers are not growing as much as they would like.

It was not possible to rely solely on paper advertisements.

 

It was truly a dilemma. So the New York Times was looking for an outsider to present a new vision. Thompson was not just an outsider of the company, he was a foreigner (UK) and from an outside industry (broadcasting).

But he's an outsider, so just because he has an objective and sober perspective doesn't make him the CEO of the New York Times.

First of all, he had to be a person trusted by the reporters who are the center of the New York Times, and he had to have the digital experience that the owner family wanted.

Thompson met both.

Former head of BBC:

[caption id="attachment_6285" align="alignleft" width="225"] Former head of BBC[/caption]

He was a former head of the world's best public broadcasting station, the BBC, and had experience in expanding the BBC's digital domain.

He made the BBC reborn as a global multimedia press by launching the iPlayer that allows you to watch broadcasts on the BBC website.

As a result, 55 million people visited the BBC's website during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

However, he had never worked for a profit-making company like the New York Times.

Almost all of my career was at the public broadcaster, the BBC.

This was a weakness. But it wasn't a big deal.

The New York Times, led by Thompson over the past eight years, has been transformed into a completely different company.

The number of digital subscribers, which was around 500,000, has surpassed 5 million, and the total number of paid subscribers has reached 6.5 million.

In the second quarter of last year, digital sales exceeded that of paper newspapers. It was the first in the history of the New York Times.

Digital subscription and advertisement sales were $185.5 million, while paper newspaper subscriptions and advertising sales were $175.4 million.

Learning the organizational culture of New York Times:

 

For analog companies to move to digital, everyone must be on board.

Owners need to set a clear direction and executives need to communicate clear practices.

But, how did Thompson, who was not from the inside, communicate?

First of all, he asked to attach himself and his opponent as secretary.

Opposite here is someone who has worked for The New York Times for a long time, knows how the company works, and has no strangers in the company.

The company appointed 33-year veteran Mary Ellen Ramana as Thompson's secretary.

 

"Mary Ellen did a great job addressing the organizational and cultural issues of the company that I would never have known," Thompson said.

In fact, Thompson could have brought a secretary who had worked with the BBC.

Then he would have been more comfortable knowing his inclinations.

But Thompson didn't settle for his comforts, he picked someone who could teach him about the organizational culture of the New York Times.

Mark Thompson's interactions with company's executives:

 

 

Thompson continued to meet and dine with his men during the early days of his tenure.

After he became CEO, he decided to meet 100 of the company's top executives, and he constantly had breakfast and lunch in the office with small groups.

He also said that in the evening he had a drink with one person and had dinner with the other every day. So, we met four teams in one day. he says

“CEOs need networks. You can't change organizations with an email command."
“I was trying to find some parts of the organization that could help me make a difference.” But I took it easy, trying to find a balance between making judgments and directing on the fly and listening to a lot of stories.

 

It's almost impossible to give directions without even knowing it right from the start, and it seems too passive if you just listen.

The situation of the New York Times, which Thompson understood after taking office, was not as good as expected.

The New York Times was generating sales in four major areas.

There are four types: paper newspaper subscriptions, paper newspaper advertisements, digital advertisements, and digital subscriptions. Only digital subscriptions were on the rise

Paper newspaper subscriptions:

 

It maintained the status quo, paper newspaper ads fell, and digital ads began to decline.

At that time, the New York Times applied a paywall so that only 20 articles a month could be viewed for free.

[caption id="attachment_6153" align="aligncenter" width="305"] New York Times Digital Subscription[/caption]

 

To see more, you had to pay a subscription fee. Only digital subscriptions were on the rise, but the trend was starting to slow down.

At the time, people in the newspaper industry thought that they could just take the advertising model of the paper newspaper online.

But the ‘outsider’ Thompson saw the future of newspapers in digital subscriptions.

News as a sophisticated cultural object:

But he had to redefine news to open the wallets of readers accustomed to free news. He believed that news was not just hard news in fields such as politics, society and the economy.

We wanted our readers to read the New York Times and get information so they could buy a house, get a new job, choose a restaurant to have dinner or eat out at, and choose a movie to watch on the weekend. So he redefined news as a sophisticated cultural object.

He thought that people would open their wallets if they made this kind of news high quality and offered it.

Fortunately, people were slowly getting used to opening their wallets to quality content.

Thanks to Netflix and Spotify. The ‘habit’ of paying for movies and music was leading to the habit of paying for good news content.

Accordingly, the New York Times' work was redefined as first creating a digital news product that can be viewed on a smartphone or tablet, then creating a website and curating it to create a paper newspaper.

 

Until then, the limited platform of paper newspapers was limiting the way news was delivered. But let's get this out

The news has become much more diverse and in-depth. Many new attempts have emerged. Cooking section, podcasts, crossword puzzles and more.

Of course, there have been many failures. But the attempts didn't stop

Thompson called it “the conveyor belt of ideas.”

A clash between CEO and editor:

 

He kept trying new things, failed, and learned along the way.

In the process, a kind of power struggle arises.

It was a clash between CEO Thompson and his editor.

In original newspapers, it is a tradition to separate editorial and management rights.

Just like the separation of governments in the past. This is true of all newspapers, not just the New York Times.

If the management side keeps controlling the editorial right, it will not be able to play the role of the media.

[caption id="attachment_6157" align="alignright" width="310"] Jill Abramson, executive editor of The New York Times,[/caption]

Jill Abramson, editor of the New York Times when Thompson took over, thought Thompson was breaking down the barriers between editorial and management too quickly to boost digital sales.

As Thompson tried so many ideas and new news products, he didn't communicate with Abramson one by one.

Hardcore journalist Abramson continued to clash with Thompson

Eventually, the owner came out.

Debate about the direction of New York Times:

 

In May 2014, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. dismissed Abramson, the first female editor in the history of the New York Times, in favor of Thompson.

It was a signal that digital transformation was more important.

[caption id="attachment_6159" align="aligncenter" width="240"] The New York Times digital innovation report 2014[/caption]

 

Since then, Thompson's digital transformation has accelerated.

The New York Times senior executives, including Thompson, held a sort of 'final debate' about the direction the New York Times was heading for for six or seven hours every Friday afternoon.

It goes on every week, so you can call it an over-the-top discussion, but anyway, the atmosphere was serious.

There were a lot of times when Goseong was playing hard. But through this kind of communication, The New York Times has further spurred the digital transformation.

In this process, the ‘Innovation Report’
(Innovation Report, March 2014)’,
(Our Path Forward, October 2015)’,
Reports have emerged that share a clear vision, such as (Journalism that stands apart, January 2017).

The digital organization has also been reorganized from time to time. The editorial staff has grown from 1,300 in 2013 to 1,750 now hiring journalists as well as data video journalists, scientists and engineers.

Changing the engine of airplane in flights:

 

 

Thompson announced his resignation in July, saying he had "done what he could" and stepped down as CEO.

His successor is Meredith Levin, the current Chief Operating Officer (COO), whom Thompson scouted in 2013.

Sunil Gupta, a professor at Harvard Business School, once said that moving to digital is like changing the engine of an airplane in flight.

Changing the engine during flight will force the plane to descend, even for a moment.

The New York Times is no longer just a newspaper.

Thompson is perhaps the only CEO in the media industry to successfully change engines in flight. Not through cost cuts that many media outlets have tried, but through bold investments.