Outgoing New York Times CEO on the stock's 400% run and what happens there if Donald Trump loses

Published Mon, Aug 10 202011:49 AM EDT

Key Points

New York Times CEO Mark Thompson is stepping down after eight years running the company.
He says he expects there will no longer be a physical New York Times paper in 20 years.
He acknowledges Donald Trump's presidency helped with subscription additions but predicts the losing side of the 2020 presidential election will argue about its legitimacy, leading to even more news in the decade to come.

A View from the Top is a Q & A series exclusively available on CNBC Pro . Alex Sherman will regularly speak with a business leader about decision-making, investing and industry news. When Mark Thompson took over as The New York Times Company chief executive officer in 2012, the company's shares traded around $9 a share. Today, The New York Times trades at more than $46 per share. That 400% gain has been driven by a digital transformation that seemed unlikely to go smoothly when Thompson took the reins. Thompson has announced he is stepping down as CEO in September. He'll be replaced by Meredith Kopit Levien. Thompson explains to CNBC how he changed the company's definition of digital, what may happen to subscriptions if President Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden in November, and why there won't be a print edition of The New York Times in 20 years. Here's the full Q & A: (This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.) Alex Sherman, CNBC: You were named CEO of The New York Times in August 2012 (after decades at the BBC). At the time, shares were trading around $9. Today they're $46 and change. I'm not a math major but that's about a 400%-plus gain. Mark Thomspon, New York Times CEO : Yeah, it's kinda fun. 5x or 6x. Sherman: 5x, right. How'd you do it? Thompson: I feel about my time at The New York Times, the company was ready to change. I think the pent up demand for innovation and taking some risks and trying some new stuff was all there. The company needed someone to give them permission to do that. I was able to do that and say, if you look at our current track, we're not going to make it. The digital revenue in the end is not growing quickly enough to offset the inevitable declines on the print side, so we better change our tactics and try some bigger, bolder stuff. To their great credit, the company -- the newsroom and the business side -- basically said yes to that. I remember talking with a friend of mine who was a reporter at The New York Times in about 2014, and I believe he used the phrase "comically inept" to describe the Times at digital. Looking back, do you agree with that assessment? The New York Times, in common with much of American and British TV, was taking too narrow a view of what digital was. They thought of digital as a new platform for their traditional product. They were doing almost a facsimile edition of the physical The New York Times on a website, and your job is done. You've done digital. You were using this new distribution technique to get the thing you've always done out to the audience. But there are some obvious things about digital. The peak time for digital consumption on a smartphone is 7:00 in the morning. Very early on, I went down to the newsroom of The New York Times at 7:00 in the morning, and it's half a dozen guys with hoovers. The night shift has gone home, the day shift hasn't arrived. Nothing is happening. And of course the thing about the smartphone is that it's a dynamic platform. You can be interested in breaking news, and you might want The New York Times to bring you news as it's happening. There was the massive explosion recently in Beirut. You want to hear about that quickly. That was simply not in the DNA and the practice of the company, which had been wholly focused on putting, what remains to this day, a wonderful print product to bed in the evening and figuring out the next lifecycle of the paper in mid-morning of the following day. Digital runs deep. It's about human beings and their behavior changing. It's about new needs. It's about more visual, social. I think the problem was they thought they'd cracked it. They'd had a good, clean launch of an excellent website. They'd gotten a very nice digital advertising business. This was before the inevitable encroachment of the big platforms. And so they'd thought they'd done it. The issue is not what can we do more, it was that we'd tried digital, and it's just not growing enough. So we've run out of answers. How much of a factor did Donald Trump have in the digital gains? I think by 2016, we'd gotten our act together. We had a lot of digital expertise in the building. We'd decided we were subscription first and that we'd pivot the business not just from print to digital but from advertising dollars to subscription. And just at the level of product, customer journey and marketplace, we'd gotten a lot better. And so we were ready to take the opportunity when it arose. But clearly, a dramatic news cycle -- just day after day, enormous stories and enormous headlines -- clearly helps. This is a reality about journalism. What I'm saying has nothing to do with one's views or lack of them about Donald Trump. Same with the coronavirus. This is another enormous year for news. We see that in the audience numbers, just as CNBC and everyone else does. But I want to say there's a lot of underlying work in how the machine works, if you'd like. And also, by 2016, we were into a pattern of investing into our newsroom, hiring more journalists, spending more money each year on journalism. That put us in a very small class of news organizations in the western world. Most news organizations were shrinking. One of the reasons we performed well on that story and other big stories since is that we've had more resources. Let's imagine a scenario a year from now when the pandemic is over, or roughly over, and Joe Biden becomes president. Do you envision in that scenario -- I know you won't be the CEO of The New York Times anymore -- but both in terms of the Times and the news media in general, do you think subscriptions to the news will have peaked and will start to decline? I think a more lively news cycle helps the news business. It always has. But bad news/good news though, in my view, our societies have been torn apart by fundamental disruptive forces around social division, globalization, automation, climate change, mass immigration and so on. If you think one election result is going to solve those problems and the news is going to go back to a placid few months in 1958, I don't believe it. I just don't believe it. I think the whole world, and America, is just in a wrenching transitional period. After arguably decades of post-war stability, we're now in this crazy period of uncertainty and tension and anger, and I don't think the anger goes away. We know, I think, in advance, that the losers of the election in 2020, whoever they are, will not wish to believe the election was legitimate. The battle will go on, the noise will continue. And the underlying issues facing the U.S., same with the U.K. and the rest of Europe, by the way, are very difficult and intractable. A united president with a united Congress, I don't know. I think these are immensely difficult times. And my prediction would be there's going to be a lot of news in the next decade -- probably more news in the next decade than the last decade. Let's talk a little bit about the brand of The New York Times. Obviously, Donald Trump and his surrogates have hammered on this issue that The New York Times is fake news. Do you think there's a lasting effect among Trump supporters -- mainly Republicans -- that now think of The New York Times differently, perhaps in a dangerous way, or do you feel like this is a moment time and this is just bombastic rhetoric that won't last? I think we can agree -- I can certainly agree -- that it's bombastic rhetoric. It's interesting, through the campaign in 2016. and even for the first few weeks after the election, my answer to that would have been no, it's obvious what the Times is. Read it. It's a kind of weighty, serious, well-intentioned... anyone who actually bothers to look at it would realize what it is, and so my answer would have been no. By the kind of late November, early December 2016, I'd begun to get worried both about Trump's attacks, but also about some of the defense that was being made of the New York Times which was that it was being defended as if it was kind of the house magazine of the American left. I rang up David Rubin, our chief marketing officer, and basically said if I can scramble together 10 million bucks out of thin air, what could you do around brand marketing so we could get our own story about our own mission out in our own words, and that's where 'The Truth is Hard' campaign began from. We launched that on Oscar night in early 2017, and that was really recognizing that however unfair or however inaccurate the attacks, there is a risk that people that don't really know you and don't use you already will begin to typecast you, because somebody else is presenting them with a neat narrative. I think that battle continues, and I think the battle both for the seriousness and the good faith of the Times' journalism, but more broadly for the desirability and the possibility of objective news, that continues. I think we can see that battle raging at the moment. I think it will again rage through the election. Do you worry about the image of the New York Times becoming too liberal? We saw some of this bubble over with the controversies around Bari Weiss and the Tom Cotton essay . In this era, does it make sense for the New York Times to say, 'Look, in some aspects, perhaps we are liberal minded, but this is what you should expect from us moving forward.' Well, one obvious point to make is that the editorial board of the New York Times, the people, the men and women who write the editorials of the paper, have got a preponderance of liberals among them. That aspect of the opinion side of the Times has got...I mean, the last Republican President to be endorsed by the New Times was Dwight Eisenhower. So it's been a while, we'll see about 2020 but I'd be genuinely surprised - I won't be at the Times anymore - if the paper endorses Trump. I think you're on safe ground there. The paper tries strenuously in its news coverage not to do that. And, in opinion -- and I'm basically a journalist and an editor, I'm not really an executive at all -- I'm genuinely convinced that our publisher A.G. Sulzberger and both James Bennet, but also crucially our acting head of opinion Katie Kingsbury are committed to having a broad range of opinion expressed in the Times. We've had a deputy attorney general in the Times making the case for the federal courts imposing and, indeed, carrying out the death penalty. That's just one example of an opinion in a very smartly, tightly argued short essay, making a case that many, many people who think of The Times as a voice of a left would find, 'why is that there?' Well, the answer is that's there because we want a broad range of opinions in the paper. This is an incredibly polarized time. There are lots of people who would love to paint us into that corner, and not just the opponents or critics of The Times, but some of its supporters, who think it should be loyal to one cause. We have to just patiently, and my successors have to patiently, make the case that we're an independent news organization. We were having a staff meeting today and someone asked anonymously, 'why do we take ads from the Trump campaign?' Well, the answer is we take these ads, we have very tight rules about what they can contain, inaccuracy is not allowed, offensive content is not allowed, there are other rules -- but we take political ads. We take political ads from political parties with no bias from left or right. That's what The Times is. Perhaps I hope the truth .... I've spent 40 years in and out of journalism believing that the truth wins in the end. I have to say we go on patiently making our case. My strong hope and belief is that people will come to accept it. Given that answer, did you agree with the decision to have James Bennet step down after the Cotton op-ed? It was certainly a particularly wrenching moment and a painful moment, obviously painful for James but also for everyone who has seen just how much James achieved in that role. The breadth and the broadening of opinion included in particular the hiring voices like Bret Stephens and, indeed, Bari Weiss. However, I think what is also true is you have to have strict, proper, editorial process and controls. The famous op-ed piece by Senator Tom Cotton hadn't really been through its paces and should have been. I think in the end, in the circumstance, in this particular case, I think the right decision was made. But the fact that one case -- of course, understandably in this powder-keg moment, everyone wants to extrapolate from one case to say this is a watershed moment, and The Times will never again publish a conservative voice. Look at Opinion this week. We are publishing conservative voices. So you can believe the right decision was made in that case -- I mean, I wasn't involved but I was obviously a close observer, and yet still believe that the organization is genuinely committed to a broad range of views. One challenge I've had as a reporter over the past four years is you almost unintentionally sometimes wade into politicized territory by reporting facts. Some of it manifests itself in word choice -- is it a falsehood or a lie? I find myself sometimes bending over backward in the way I phrase things, both publicly or in print, to make sure that I'm not taking a side politically while still trying to say, hey, that statement isn't right, or this doesn't make sense logically. It's actually maybe an easier issue dealing with the president than it is dealing with the general public, when the public is espousing thoughts on vaccines or climate change or whatever it may be that aren't supported in fact. So the question is: what is the right mission for The New York Times? Is it to educate the public or is it to reflect the public? There's two or three things going on there. First, you just have to accept that it's a minefield. In other words, we are at a moment where almost everything is either already politicized or very easily. It turns out wearing a mask is regarded by some as a political act rather than a piece of personal and collective health. So that's the first thing. I think the primary job of the New York Times newsroom -- I'm sure Dean Baquet would say this -- is to try and accurately report what's happening. I think sensitivity as far as you can with language is of course desirable. The journalist should try not to unnecessarily offend and should try to also recognize even things that you may say yourselves as common sense are controversial to some people. There are plenty of areas where, for example, for the matter of religion and faith more broadly, where being sensitive to people who may have a different belief system from you in your use of language is really important. Its important for politicians and for journalists. I don't think The Times has a mission to educate people if it means telling them what to think. I think giving them the informational tools they need to make up their own minds about what's happening is the central mission of The New York Times -- to try to help people understand the world. If it all possible, give them the context to understand, if you like, what is the agree territory? To what does everyone agree? And what are these areas where there is a disagreement? And I think it's very important that these disagreements are recognized and reported properly. We know, for example, at the edges, there are some pretty bitter battles going on between transgender activists and some feminists. I don't even want to try to say who started it or any of that, but it's important to report that and not just stumble into it without understanding what's going on. To me, a lot of this is about pretty old fashioned.... literally just having the mixture of accurate observational skills and enough empathy to get into a story and try to understand the world from the point of view of different protagonists in a story. Language is part of that. I'm slightly disheartened that even quite small and accidental misuses of language can lead to any amount of trouble in the doxxing of individual journalists subsequently. I think the brutal criticism of missteps by journalists sometimes is part of a general, more aggressive, more hostile attitude toward journalists which I think is counterproductive. A sensible democracy requires good journalists. Just like you need you need to let the doctors get on with their jobs, and let the priests and the rabbis and the Imams get on with their jobs, you need to let journalists get on with their jobs. I think the targeting -- in particular the targeting of women journalists -- is one of the most disheartening things I've seen in my last few years of the job. A few business-related questions. You guys just released earnings. Print advertising is down 50% year over year. Obviously we're in the middle of the pandemic. I spoke with an executive at Roku a couple weeks ago . He told me he expected advertising declines in traditional TV, which are happening during the pandemic, to never right themselves. In other words, the pandemic accelerated trends that were already in play. It seems like there's a good parallel there to print advertising. Do you think, by and large, this is the slow decline to the end of print journalism? In other words, is there any reason to think print advertising will ever recover? We don't know the future. I'm skeptical about whether it will recover to where it was during 2019 levels. It was already in year-over-year decline for many years. I think that decline is probably inexorable. It's harder to tell about television. There's a piece of conservatism inside television advertising buyers -- the networks and the advertisers who advertise on television -- where they believe a certain kind of brand marketing, the 30-second TV spot, is the most potent way of reaching big audiences with brand messages. I suspect over time that will erode. And it's possible that, as you say, just as we've seen in past recessions with print advertising, that the recession takes the advertising away and it's a one-way ratchet. That advertising either comes back partially or not at all. We don't know that yet. But for print, of course, the sad thing is that 65 million Americans used to pay for newspapers. Somehow that enormous willingness to pay -- that market and opportunity -- got lost. The Times has a physical newspaper that's profitable seven days a week and across the United States without a single dollar of print advertising in it. We have a newspaper which can survive profitably for some reasons with no advertising at all. I don't expect that to happen any time soon. But very few other physical newspapers are in that position. So, probably, Covid will have a further very negative impact on an industry which is already reeling. Is there a day in your lifetime when there is no print New York Times product? I think you'd have to ask my doctor about that! I believe the Times will definitely be printed for another 10 years and quite possibly another 15 years -- maybe even slightly more than that. I would be very surprised if it's printed in 20 years time. I'm 63, so you'll have to work out. 83! You should be fine! We'll talk again in 20 years about this. Obviously the point of what we've been trying to do at The Times is to get enough momentum behind that growth of the digital business and the new platforms like podcasting and stuff in TV that your mature platform, when it falls away, it's OK. By the way, we've still got 900,000+ people who love reading the physical paper, and we want to go on serving them the paper for as long as it makes economic sense. In my view, that's for many years to come. You see some other media businesses out there -- Spotify is a good example of this -- where they're trying to expand with podcasts. It seems to me that it's possible that in the next 10 years, The New York Times could become a more fully fleshed out media company. You're looking at some other publicly traded media companies -- Netflix, Spotify -- and it seems like investors want them to spend money on content. Is there a chance The New York Times is suddenly a multimedia behemoth, where it's big in podcasting, TV, print -- and this idea that it's "print" and "digital" becomes anachronistic? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, The Times was endeavoring to be just that. It had TV stations, cable networks with Discovery, a stake in the [Boston] Red Sox, other newspapers -- The Boston Globe, the Worcester Telegraph -- and so on. For what it's worth, my instinct with the New York Times, although I think halo products -- games, crosswords -- other brain teasing puzzles for smart people -- that's a New York Times tradition which goes back to the middle of the 20th Century and feels very appropriate for The New York Times to do. Cooking, Wirecutter, our consumer website, podcasting, which feels to me doing Times journalism in another way on another platform. That feels very close to the core mission. My own view about The New York Times Company is it will probably choose to stick centrally of this notion of really serious journalism but with some opportunities around the edges. I see a bundle of activities that you can relate back to the New York Times brand and what it stands for. We should remember that the classic New York Times -- I started reading the New York Times in the middle '80s -- the New York Times was a place where you got your job through the Times, you got your apartment through the Times, it told you what to go and see on Broadway, which of the new movies were right or wrong, it gave you the local sports teams. It was a much more complete companion in your life than just providing you with headlines and opinions. Recapturing that idea of a companion -- a useful guide to many different aspects of life -- food is a good example. The first recipes in the New York Times were in the 1860s. There's something about being more than just being than just the people who tell you about the current president or bring you news from Wall Street. I think things like our Modern Love column , which tells from the front lines of modern relationships, and is now a successful Amazon drama -- there's so much under-exploited IP. The Times is big enough now that we can do something like 1619 where we can just say -- Nikole Hannah-Jones in this case -- can just say why not look at American history through the lens of slavery and its impact and aftermath. That can become in its own right a kind of national event. It's being taught in schools across the country now. I think within what seems like quite a narrow definition of The New York Times, there's an immense amount of intellectual property to exploit. Which, in business terms, is a lot of new product lines and new revenue sources. There are at least a handful of people that work at The New York Times that have their own personal brands. Some of those people are reporters that speak out on Twitter that maybe doesn't conform identically to The New York Times brand. Is that something you think The New York Times should support, or do you get into dangerous ground there? The idea that in the ranks of your journalists you've got stars is not new. You think of the legendary drama and theater critics of The New York Times. There have always been very notable opinion writers. Maureen Dowd is one such example. My view is it behooves everyone in the newsroom to adhere pretty strictly to the written down guidelines on behavior and limited opinion, even when they're speaking on Twitter and social media, if the New York Times brand is anywhere to be seen. What they're saying reflects on the Times, and they're speaking in their role as a Times person. We remain pretty strict on that. But I think the idea that audiences want, in a way they perhaps didn't want 10 or 20 years ago, to get to know the person who is writing and speaking -- partly for reasons of legitimization. Audiences want to know individual journalists, just as we know as journalists. There are some people you trust because you know who are they. The audience is genuinely intrigued by individual writers. I think that's inevitable and where we are now. We love journalists -- sometimes, not always -- but sometimes to give a sense of what it was like. Our journalists in the field in Beirut where the terrible explosion happened -- injured, mercifully not really seriously -- their testimony about what happened to them becomes important. Clearly there are risks. Clearly if you lay it over into a very polarized political situation, the idea of individual staff reporters going too far in some digital social media environment is a risk. But it's one that Dean Baquet, our managing editor, and our colleagues are very apprised of. What was it about Meredith Levien that made you think she was the right person to take over for you as CEO ? I think the biggest single thing about Meredith -- I mean, there are one or two obvious things. She's just a ferociously hungry, aggressive executive who is extremely good at the entire sequence of strategy all the way through to effective execution. So, she's an extraordinarily effective executive. Two more things: Firstly, she has intense focus on talent and getting the right people and the right expertise. She's a talent magnet. She's incredibly good at attracting very able people. A lot of the up rating we've seen getting a world-class business side along side a world-class newsroom, which I genuinely believe we have now, is because of Meredith's eye for talent and ability to attract and retain it. The other thing is that when I'd heard Meredith had been the head of advertising at Forbes....I got her to run advertising at the New York Times. By the way, there was a lot of skepticism about why we needed an external candidate. We had some strong internal candidates. Why on earth are you getting some woman from Forbes? That kind of thing. But she's grown. The big thing about Meredith is she's a learner. She made a mid-career change, obviously, as CEO-to-be. But she's absolutely still hungry to learn. It's been the way we've seen her learning, each step, progressively. Collectively, we've given her bigger and bigger opportunities. But as you know, in management, every opportunity is also an opportunity to fail and disappoint. She's risen to the occasion every time. You can't know about anyone for sure whether they're going to be a great CEO. As an executive, I've seen loads and loads of CEOs. The humility and hunger that goes with that ability and determination to go on learning is a really important success factor. And she's not a journalist, but she really gets the mission of the news organization. She understands that any compromising of the journalism, and it's game over. And it's really valuable to have someone who can handle the commercial and business side of The Times who also gets what The Times does. It also helps when you're doing well financially to find and keep talent. It's very tough. By the way, when I offered Meredith the job back in 2012, she kind of went radio silent for a week. Everyone she knew was telling her not to take it. They were saying, it's a newspaper, it's a very conservative place, they won't change, they can't change. Well, I took a bet after I listened to the family and the board that these guys mean it. After a week, Meredith came back and did the same. I think both of us feel we've had total backing from the organization for drastic change. That's why we've been able to do what we've been able to do. It's a united company. And a united New York Times is more or less unstoppable I'm guessing it took her less than a week to take the CEO job? [Laughs] It didn't come as a complete surprise. We took her through a very, very extended process. But the board -- and I'm a director of the board -- we put her through her paces. And we absolutely looked at the outside market and looked at alternatives. And we ended up unanimously deciding she was the right person. Let's talk about the outside media world. You must look at other media sites. Among new ones, there's somewhat of a split. There are subscription sites and advertising-reliant sites. Put on your investor hat for me. What is it that you would look for in another media company to say this is something I'd feel comfortable investing in? It's the relationship with the audience. The finding of a good fit between a quality product and evidence of audience engagement. One of the problems with the historic advertising model is your commercial relationship is with the advertiser rather than the actual reader. One of the first things we did at The Times is to pivot the entire organization to actually listen to and understand cohorts of readers. The obvious point about digital is you need many more of them than you used to in print. So who are the new ones going to be? How are we going to reach out to new audiences and engage them? I think an organization that uses humility and street smarts to figure out its audience and you can feel that connection beginning... I've always thought that if you can engage an audience and you can get their attention and get them to love you, the monetization is mechanic. We think subscription is a good way of doing it now. But that's actually the easy bit. It's been one of the fateful things about the news business. They've obsessed about the monetization bit. They should have been obsessing about how good is our product? Is our journalism good enough for the audience? How do they live? How do they use our stuff? Where else can we touch them in their lives? Instead of worrying too much about Facebook advertising revenue. There is, of course, a context for all of that. But this is very basic stuff. The problem for most legacy media is they are losing younger audiences or discovering they can't get them anymore. This is true of cable TV, it's true of broadcast TV, it's true essentially of most newspapers and magazines. They are increasingly looking like a niche for a legacy audience. To me, the big thing I'm interested in is what are your answers on audience replenishment? What have you got in terms of content that is distinctive and valuable that people are going to force themselves to find and ultimately pay for? Are there one or two companies out there that you think are doing a particularly good job? I'm very skeptical and am afraid of those players who are going for a broad, semi-entertainment, semi-factual market. It's very crowded, that space. It's very hard to see how you get the ad dollars above the very low CPMs that the big digital platforms get. It's very hard to see how you distinguish yourself and create high barriers to entry. So you're going to end up in that very competitive, low margin world. But I think Axios is a smart contribution. It's tightly, nicely made. Don't know if there's any scaling there. The future has lots of different models. I think quite a lot of legacy businesses are going to struggle. One of the things I slightly worry about, particularly in Europe but also in America, is if there's an attempt to patch up legacy media essentially by transferring money through regulation from big digital platforms and then giving it to legacy players. It seems to me maybe some money should be coming from the big players, but I'd much rather it was going to innovation, and absolutely going to legacy players as long as they can demonstrate they are doing what needs to be done. I do feel that at The Times, what we did from 2012 on, is we took some of the energy which was going in to blaming other people -- we can't do this because of Google, or Facebook is stealing our lunch -- we took some of that energy and vituperation and instead transferred it to opening the hood and trying to get our own engine fixed. If others did a bit of that, they'd probably fare better. You're speaking to me from Maine. I'm speaking to you in my son's bedroom. As far as I can tell, The Times continues to put out a very good product. I'd say the same for CNBC. Will there be lasting impacts from the pandemic on The Times that will transform the industry in terms of people working from home and how they interact with others, or do you expect when this over, things will return to a state of pre-pandemic? A lot of journalism has always happened from the field. I ran the BBC's operation in Tiananmen Square a lifetime ago and we told one of the biggest stories of the 20th Century from hotel rooms and literally from links in Tiananmen Square. We didn't do it from the office. I think the idea that journalism subsists more out there -- and honestly, a lot of journalism happens on the telephone. Always has. So I think we'll end up more mobile, but I don't know how far how that goes. If everyone working from the office was a 1, and everyone working from home remotely was a 10, I think The New York Times was probably a 2. I've got colleagues who think we should move straight to a 10, particularly the younger ones. I've got some colleagues who would like to move from 2 to 1. I think probably the truth is it will depend on which activity you're talking about. It wouldn't surprise me if The New York Times as a company ended up at a 3 or 4 or a 5. I still think the idea of a physical community, particularly in a newsroom ... so, on election night, maybe not in 2020 but in 2024, you've got a team of editors who are bumping into each other and swapping notes very fluidly. The same way as in a cable news station -- that sense of a group of people who can instantly catch each other's eye. I still think there will be plenty of that. But if you said that a lot of people, particularly individual contributors, could work remotely and maybe come in as some of our opinion writers already do, maybe once or twice a month into the office to have lunch and meet people, I think that's feasible. So what I hope comes out of this is a pretty healthy reevaluation of this. I did an earnings call back in April. I went to the office to do it to get a clear (phone) line. The place was deserted -- completely deserted. I was the only person on the floor. I brought my bike in and rode around on my bike on this floor with my phone and filmed the endless empty tables of workstations. And you think, that's a pretty strange way to pack human beings. It's like packing human beings into a milking parlor. If the point of getting together is social space, how come everyone's got their own workstation and barriers to the next person? So I do think the 20th century classic office model .... I can't quite see the point of it. So, I think when we do come back into the office eventually, all of us, asking some basic questions about what's the best use of shared space should be to the floor as well. Last question -- you mentioned you were 63. That's not old. What's the next step for you? A bit in the same way that journalists have that odd thing that when everyone else is running away from trouble they're trying to edge in the opposite direction towards it, I like big challenges and naughty problems. And I particularly like naughty problems when other people have said, 'this is impossible, it can't be done.' It's like the Rubik's Cube. Give me a go, I'll try it. And so maybe there are some more challenges. I've been a chief executive for 18 years. It does not have to be -- it could be -- but it doesn't have to be in the role of chief executive. It doesn't have to be for profit. But I guess I'm going to look, over the next few weeks and months, at what some of the next challenges could be.

Mark Thompson speaks during the CNBC Evolve New York event on June 19, 2019.

Astrid Stawiarz | CNBC

A View from the Top is a Q&A series exclusively available on CNBC Pro. Alex Sherman will regularly speak with a business leader about decision-making, investing and industry news.

When Mark Thompson took over as The New York Times Company chief executive officer in 2012, the company's shares traded around $9 a share. Today, The New York Times trades at more than $46 per share. That 400% gain has been driven by a digital transformation that seemed unlikely to go smoothly when Thompson took the reins.

Thompson has announced he is stepping down as CEO in September. He'll be replaced by Meredith Kopit Levien.

Thompson explains to CNBC how he changed the company's definition of digital, what may happen to subscriptions if President Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden in November, and why there won't be a print edition of The New York Times in 20 years.

Here's the full Q&A: