Ted Turner's CNN, at a crossroads |
"Feels like a death in the family, doesn’t it," former CNN producer and correspondent Frida Ghitis wrote on Facebook yesterday.
Ghitis was talking, of course, about the death of Ted Turner, the CNN founder whose vision of 24/7 television news changed the world we all inhabit.
For CNN employees and alums, Turner's death yesterday prompted an outpouring of remembrances and reflections.
But this moment isn't merely nostalgic: The 24/7 news format that Turner invented is being reinvented, and the institution that Turner built in Atlanta is being rebuilt as a subscription news service.
The business challenges are enormous, and the competitors are endless. Turner's wisdom, his energy, his swagger, and his sense of purpose are all needed right now.
As Turner's death sank in, employees wrote tributes on Post-it notes and placed them on the giant CNN logo outside the Atlanta HQ. "Thank you, Ted, for taking a risk," one person wrote. "May we all be so brave."
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The word "steady" came to mind as I read the tributes. The media environment can be capricious, brutal, and volatile. Keeping up with the news can feel the same. That's partly why viewers — and readers, followers, and subscribers — value consistency and reliability. That's what CNN has represented for 45+ years.
This moment is unique and uncertain for a couple of reasons. In the background of all the touching tributes to Turner as the swashbuckling media maverick who created CNN is a lingering question: Where is it heading under Paramount and CEO David Ellison?
That question came up at Tina Brown's Truth Tellers summit yesterday. Speaking just a few hours before Turner's death was announced, Christiane Amanpour invoked the "ideological realignment of CBS" and said "obviously I'm concerned" about CNN's future.
Then, after Wolf Blitzer announced Turner's passing on air, President Trump, true to form, said the quiet part out loud. Sounding very much like a lame-duck president wondering about what his successor might do, Trump wrote that Turner, "one of the Greats of All Time," regretted selling his company "because the new ownership took CNN, his 'baby,' and destroyed it. It became woke, and everything that he is not all about."
"Maybe the new buyers, wonderful people, will be able to bring it back to its former credibility and glory," Trump wrote.
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After Turner's death was announced yesterday, CNN's broadcasts were filled with reminiscences by veteran staffers. I followed up with some of the guests and asked what Turner would want CNN and its owner to be doing — and not doing — in 2026.
Rick Davis, a CNN original who was the network's longest-serving executive when he retired in 2021, said, "Ted would likely urge again for the News to be the Star. More headlines and stories about what happened in the country and world today."
Davis said Turner "would likely urge ownership to not meddle in editorial decisions in a way to seek approval from the government or any politicians in the US or any other country. Just the opposite — practice tough accountability journalism."
Tom Johnson, a longtime president of CNN who became close friends with Turner, said "he would still want CNN 'to be the finest news network on the planet' (his exact words to me when he hired me in 1990)."
"I know Ted would want the CNN of now and always to be a place where news reigns, and by that he meant the facts, and all of them, no matter where they lead," former anchor Judy Woodruff remarked. "I heard him say dozens of times that what mattered was that we told the whole story, all sides of it, that there be no thumb on the scale."
Turner, Woodruff said, "wanted people everywhere to have access to the news, factual news, because it goes hand in hand with democratic systems... and he set an example by never weighing in on what we covered or how we covered it."
Ghitis, who still contributes to CNN, told me that "Ted would want CNN and other news organizations to once again 'make news the star.' He would want us to help keep the public informed — about the entire world — the principal goal. I think the Ted we knew in the early days of CNN would do away with the endless debates and use more resources for newsgathering, to help people understand the world and understand each other."
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Tapping into Ted's 'questing spirit' |
Turner's CNN was "scrappy," as former DC bureau chief Sam Feist, now the CEO of C-SPAN, told Kaitlan Collins last night.
At launch in 1980, and for years thereafter, CNN was the underdog in every sense of the word. I really enjoyed writing this CNN.com story about the extraordinary uphill battle to get on the air and to be taken seriously.
In the books and oral histories about that time, there are lessons for newsrooms in 2026.
Turner's "questing spirit" is what "the media needs now, particularly legacy media, given the enormous number of challenges we have and the fundamental changes in the way audiences want news," CNN CEO Mark Thompson told Dana Bash yesterday.
Turner, he said, "stands for innovation, disruption, don't just go with what you have always done, try and think big, and be prepared to take very big risks to meet the moment, whenever that moment is." That, he said, is "the true spirit of CNN, and we need to really embrace that again, I think, today." Scrappy. Hungry. Creative. Reliable.
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>> Rupert Murdoch, once Turner's chief media rival, said "Turner’s vision for 24-hour cable news transformed the media industry and gave viewers everywhere a front seat to witness history unfold."
>> Our very own Andrew Kirell — an Atlanta Braves fan from Long Island — broke down "how Ted Turner transformed a struggling baseball franchise into 'America's Team.'"
>> Turner connected the world via TV for better and for worse: "We're living the consequences now of everybody being ON all the time," my friend Lisa Napoli, author of the CNN history "Up All Night," said on "CNN This Morning."
>> Not to be overlooked amid all the talk of CNN, TCM and other TV contributions: "History is going to judge him as this extraordinary conservationist and environmentalist," historian Douglas Brinkley said on air.
>> The NYT's Ronda Kaysen, Kevin Draper and Jack Healy explored Turner's "legacy as a landowner" who "revived entire ecosystems."
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"I just wanted to see if we could do it — like Christopher Columbus. When you do something that's never been done before, sail on uncharted waters and don't know where you’re going, you're not sure what you’re going to find when you get there, but at least you're going somewhere." |
Parsing the report about FBI probing The Atlantic |
The Atlantic's most-read story this morning is "Kash Patel's Personalized Bourbon Stash" by Sarah Fitzpatrick.
The piece, a follow-up of sorts to her "FBI Director Is MIA" article last month, had been in the works for weeks, but its publication yesterday was a *chef's kiss* moment, given what MS NOW reported earlier in the day.
"The FBI has launched a criminal leak investigation" focusing on Fitzpatrick, MS NOW's Ken Dilanian and Carol Leonnig reported, citing two sources who "said the so-called insider threat investigation is highly unusual because it did not stem from a disclosure of classified information and because it is focused on leaks to a reporter."
In response, FBI spokesman Ben Williamson said Fitzpatrick "is not being investigated," which is a statement that warrants some parsing. Some journalists wondered whether his use of the present tense meant that Fitzpatrick had been investigated but was no longer being targeted.
If the FBI's goal was/is to ID Fitzpatrick's sources — for an article about the bureau's boss — then that's obviously eyebrow-raising, as well. The Atlantic's Matt Viser and Shane Harris wrote that "the MS NOW reporting suggests a reversal of the normal process, with investigators possibly beginning their work with Fitzpatrick."
Key word: Possibly. There's simply not much clarity about this story. But I hope and expect we'll learn more eventually.
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The Atlantic isn't backing down |
The Atlantic EIC Jeffrey Goldberg responded by saying that the investigation, "if confirmed to be true," would represent "an outrageous attack on the free press and the First Amendment itself. We will defend The Atlantic and its staff vigorously; we will not be intimidated by illegitimate investigations or other acts of politically motivated retaliation; we will continue to cover the FBI professionally, fairly, and thoroughly; and we will continue to practice journalism in the public interest."
The publication of Fitzpatrick's follow-up story proved that.
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Vice News "is now being resuscitated by company founder Shane Smith, both as a social-platform-first outlet for his podcast and news reports and as a brand partnership vehicle — starting out with a collaboration with Adobe," THR's Kevin Dolak reports.
But there's probably less here than meets the eye, thus the asterisk in the headline. This is, in essence, the resurrection of Vice News, the brand, not Vice News, the newsroom. Dolak writes that "content will come when stories emerge that the vastly shrunken operation sees fit and has the capacity to cover."
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Read this Colbert interview |
Stephen Colbert sat down with Lacey Rose for THR's latest cover story, and it's an absolute must-read. About his relationship with CBS and parent company Paramount, he says, "Vendettas just sound exhausting, and I have no reason to have one. We're all big boys. I got to do this for 21 years. What is there to complain about, really? I knew that the show had to end at some time. I did not expect it to end this way. But my staff are the only people I'm worried about."
Once "The Late Show" ends, he says, "I could see creating a show. But I don't know what form it would take. I'm still doing this show." Read on...
>> "In what may be the closest thing late-night TV has ever had to an Avengers-style crossover episode, Stephen Colbert is set to welcome not one, but four other late-night hosts to 'The Late Show' in a reunion of the 'Strike Force Five," Jed Rosenzweig reports. over at LateNighter.
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The Hollywood Reporter has revived its "50 Most Powerful People in New York Media" list. The feature came out this morning. Some of the boldface names were asked how power in media in 2026 is defined. Among the answers:
>> Sam Dolnick: "Producing something that people seek out without an algorithm."
>> Emily Sundberg: "How much fun you’re having. Hard to compete with people having more fun than you.”
>> Andrew Ross Sorkin: "Trust. Everyone has distribution now; trust is the reason the audience comes back."
>> Andy Cohen: "Your ability to tell the truth and not sell out to the current administration."
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Paramount-WBD's state AG hurdle |
Another expected step in the Paramount-WBD process: "A group of state attorneys general have hit Paramount Skydance with various subpoenas," TheWrap's Lucas Manfredi reports, citing an SEC filing. Paramount says it has "been cooperating with the state attorneys general in responding to their requests.
>> Mark Ruffalo and Matt Stoller are out with a new NYT guest essay pressing the state AGs "to do what President Trump's antitrust enforcers likely will not, and block the merger" on antitrust grounds.
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>> The New York Times "defended war photographer Saher Alghorra this week after the Gaza-based contributor’s Pulitzer Prize win for b |
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