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There’s no shortage of opinion in today’s news media landscape. That’s why CNN head Mark Thompson is leaning into an ethos shared by vintage Dragnet detective Sgt. Joe Friday: “Just the facts, ma’am.”
“We see ourselves as a news network first, rather than opinion,” Thompson told ADWEEK ahead of taking the stage at Warner Bros. Discovery’s May 15 TV upfront week presentation, where he’ll share heretofore closely held details about CNN’s future.
“We’re talking about absolutely factual reporting, as well as context, depth and discussion,” continued Thompson, who previously transformed such venerable news institutions as The New York Times and the BBC. “People come to CNN for news rather than endless opinionated arguments—they come to us when they want to find out what’s happening.”
And that emphasis on factual reporting won’t be limited to what’s happening in America’s ever-volatile political realm.
“Our brand stands for news, but we want to define news pretty broadly,” Thompson emphasized. “Politics is important, but as far as we’re concerned, the weather is news. Health is news. Sports, entertainment and business are news. What we’re looking at doing is not just making sure that we’re covering all of those areas, but also packaging them and branding them across our linear and digital platforms.”
Vertical integration
To complement that broad view of news, CNN will launch new branded verticals in each of those aforementioned coverage areas that can seamlessly translate from medium to medium, be it the television network and CNN.com or a podcast and a mobile application. Thompson points to CNN’s 5 Things franchise—which now encompasses a newsletter, a podcast and an on-demand streaming series on CNN Max—as an example of that kind of successful cross-platform execution.
“We are increasingly going to think of all of our platforms as expressions of the CNN brand and CNN values,” he explained. “When we have a proposition like 5 Things, you’ll see us trying to express that across all of those platforms in different ways and also trying to create these franchises around particular subject areas like business, sports, entertainment, climate and health.”