Good Bye Jon Klein

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September 24, 2010
Categories:CNN

Klein’s farewell

A note to CNN staff from Jon Klein:

It is with a tinge of regret tempered by great expectations for the future – yours, mine, and that of the information industry in which we make our careers – that I bid all of you goodbye.

The CNN I’m leaving today is demonstrably stronger than the one I inherited almost six years ago – both editorially and financially. That is a tribute to your passion for telling stories that matter, your talent for uncovering the truth without layering on destructive bluster or partisan spin, and your willingness to indulge my appetite for innovation and change.

CNN has always experienced the vertiginous peaks and valleys of the ratings cycle, compounded these past six years by unprecedented change in news consumption habits. In the midst of all that it’s been gratifying to have led CNN/US to its highest viewership levels ever, during the 2008 elections, and I’m convinced the network is now poised to level out the troughs through the hirings of Eliot Spitzer, Kathleen Parker, and Piers Morgan, three intelligent, magnetic personalities who will join with Anderson Cooper to give viewers a reason to watch CNN in prime time no matter what the news of the day brings.

It’s been a pleasure to watch the transformation of some of our reporters into global news superstars during my time here, as we raised expectations and they blew through them. Anderson, who was anchoring the 7pm broadcast in 2004, is now the best-known and most-respected news reporter on the planet, and deservedly so. Soledad O’Brien, our morning co-anchor back then, is now the pre-eminent African-American journalist in the world, and was recently recognized by the NABJ as Journalist of the Year. Sanjay Gupta earned the moniker of “The World’s Surgeon General” through his heartfelt reporting on myriad dangerous and difficult assignments in which he often was the lone voice of Western journalism, most recently dropping everything when I called to send him to Pakistan’s devastating floods.

We’ve significantly enhanced our ability to engage Americans with the world around them through the addition of the incomparable Fareed Zakaria to our Sunday lineup and, subsequently, to the Time Warner family as a whole. These past six years have witnessed the birth of the Situation Room as a vibrant new way of relating the day’s events, as well as the rise of the Best Political Team on Television, led so ably by Wolf Blitzer to the pinnacle of political coverage during the historic election of 2008. John King’s unsurpassed political acumen came to vivid life through the Magic Wall, and we made Sunday mornings safe for wit, and for women, when Candy Crowley took over State of the Union.

As a documentary maker at heart, I am especially pleased by the resurgence of our longform programming, which won numerous honors during this period including a Peabody Award and a Columbia DuPont Award for “God’s Warriors,” and a special President’s Emmy last year for our entire body of documentary work. No other network airs as many quality documentaries as CNN – we’re premiering four more outstanding docs in the month ahead – and I salute our tireless producers and reporters for taking their already excellent work to the next level.

Together we amped up innovation on a grand scale. It was so rewarding to conspire with Sue Bunda and our colleagues at CNN.com in launching iReport; to support David Bohrman’s brilliantly conceived YouTube debate; to marry Rick Sanchez’s boundless energy to the endless possibilities of Twitter; to collaborate with Facebook and Foursquare and to champion indefatigable in-house innovators like Alex Wellen, Victor Hernandez, Janelle Rodriguez, Eric Kuhn, and Bethany Swain.

We launched impressive new cross-platform programming initiatives like CNN Heroes (the inspiration of Wendy Walker realized through the perspiration of Kelly Flynn and her team) and Impact Your World, both of which acknowledge that CNN viewers yearn to be part of something larger than themselves. And it was so rewarding to conceive and grow the ambitious Black in America series and its offspring. But even more potentially significant in the long term has been our ability to attract a diverse cadre of talented and energized producers to the In America unit so ably steered by Geraldine Moriba.

To help foster the rise of all these worthwhile new initiatives, while observing firsthand the class with which the legendary Larry King transitioned to the next phase of his remarkable career, has been an experience for which I’m forever grateful.

It has been my privilege to lead the amazing people of CNN/US. I have no doubt that you will continue to play a critical role in explaining, influencing and impacting the world, while having a hell of a lot of fun in the process. My family and I will enjoy watching you do it and rooting for your continued success.