On Wednesday morning, CNN chairman and C.E.O. Mark Thompson finally unveiled his long-awaited manifesto for the company’s future: a lengthy, well-considered, statement-of-purpose-style memo that sought to break an army of television veterans free from their linear stockade and will them into the digital present. In the memo, aptly titled “CNN’s Future,” Thompson diagnosed the all-too-familiar challenges—“The traditional TV universe is shrinking steadily,” the youths consume news on YouTube and TikTok, CNN feels “old-fashioned and unadventurous,” etcetera, etcetera—before articulating new goals and priorities, if not quite a specific roadmap for success. It was, in many ways, a sequel to the 2014 New York Times Digital Innovation Report that A.G. Sulzberger commissioned, and that had served as the catalyst for the paper’s digital transformation under Thompson a decade ago.