I once was skeptical about Mark Thompson. But he’s a good bet for CNN

‘During his Times tenure, he helped reinvent the paper.’ Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

In late 2012, I was the newly minted public editor (or newsroom watchdog) at the New York Times, when the news hit that Mark Thompson was likely to be the newspaper’s next CEO. I looked into his background at the BBC where he was director-general during a tumultuous period, and wrote a post questioning the Times hire. Slow down and investigate, I urged.

I was probably overstepping my bounds, since Thompson would be on the business side and not be directly involved in the journalism that I was supposed to be keeping an eye on.