On Thursday morning, ahead of a long-anticipated day of corporate bloodletting, CNN C.E.O. Chris Licht let his some 4,000-plus staff know that he would be spending the entire day in the executive conference room of his New York headquarters, door open, so that employees could talk directly with him about the new round of layoffs that has now left hundreds of people jobless. The optics were notable. When Licht took this job, seven months earlier, he had made a point of distancing himself from the newsroom, ensconcing himself in a corporate office five stories above the fray, and establishing a chain of command that allowed him to avoid direct, day-to-day communication with the vast majority of his staff. This was a meaningful departure from his predecessor, Jeff Zucker, who kept his office on the newsroom floor and texted and emailed with employees at all hours.