CNN's Jeff Zucker has a reputation for his prickly personality and harboring strong opinions.
During a conference with CNN employees earlier this year hosted by Anderson Cooper, an Atlanta-based CNN producer named James Curry asked how come managers fear him and are on "pins and needles' whenever he offers up an idea. "How do you alleviate this seemingly rising culture at CNN?" he asked via a pre-screened question.
(Someone was nice enough to pass the video on to me.)
Zucker looked a wee bit uncomfortable.
"I thought that was going to be Piers Morgan's questions," Zucker joked. "That was a good first question... I don't want anyone to feel like that. I want people to push back on me. What I like more than anything is for people to tell me I'm wrong... I throw out a lot of ideas and you know, honestly, half of them are crazy and you should ignore. I think the thing is to recognize and be confident in your own judgment... I do need to think about when we have our morning editorial meetings and I say I like something, then 10 shows go off and say we gotta do that. That is an issue... The most important thing in a journalistic enterprise and organization like this is I want you to push back on me. If I feel strongly about something, at the end of the day, I'll say I want to do it... but I want to encourage people not to feel like James does and not to feel like because I say something, we have to do it."
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