Why I am done with being a 'former CNN reporter'

The future is BRIGHT 😎

The other day I did a TV hit. Beforehand, they sent me an email asking me how I wanted to be introduced on the show.

I started to write: “Oh, you can call me a former CNN political reporter….” But then, I stopped myself.

Instead I typed: “Say I write a daily newsletter on Substack. Or that I make political videos on YouTube. Or that I am a senior adviser at the DGA Group. Or that I wrote a book about presidents and sports. Any of those are great.”

For the person on the other end of the email chain it was, undoubtedly, a mundane experience — one of dozens of back and forths they have with guests in a given day or week.

But for me, it was a moment. And I wanted to share it with you.

Here’s why: I spent WAY too much time in the period following my layoff from CNN memorializing the past. Thinking about what I could have done differently. How things were so great and I somehow screwed them up. (Nota bene: They actually weren’t so great!)

And I concluded that without that brand name in front of my name, I didn’t matter. That I was irrelevant.

For a long time, I let that way of thinking define me. I let myself think that I was a has-been, washed up, never to be heard from again. I skulked around — not wanting to interact with people from my old life, thinking they saw me as a pitiable figure.

Even in the first few months of starting this newsletter, I felt that way. That I was writing into a void. That anything I created from here on out would pale in comparison to what I had done before.

But then this community started to grow. And I started to realize that my future was in my hands. I needed to own that fact — and run with it.

So I leaned into writing here. And started a YouTube channel. And developed a podcast (first episode coming VERY soon!) And began to talk to people about other media (and non-media) opportunities.

No, I wasn’t going to recreate the size of the audience I had at CNN. But I didn’t have to! I was leaner and meaner. If I could get a few thousand people to subscribe to this newsletter or my sports newsletter or my YouTube channel or whatever, I could make it work!

That’s where my brain has been for at least the last six months. And, amazingly, soon after I started to see the world differently — it’s not about what you’ve DONE but what you WILL do — all sorts of cool opportunities started coming my way. (I can’t announce all of them yet! But things are happening!)

And a lot of these new opportunities were things I could never have done if I had been a salaried employee at a big media company!

I’ve just started to do TV appearances again. (My CNN contract, which recently ran out, didn’t allow me to appear on other networks.) And, for the first few, I did tell them to just call me “a former CNN reporter” or a “former Washington Post reporter.” It was easy. It was how people knew me. And, it was, for a very long time, how I thought of myself.

But, I am done with “former” anything now. Done looking back. Done fetishizing the way “things used to be.”

I have, in the past 16 months, built a whole bunch of things — including this newsletter — that I am really proud of. I built them with my own will power, hard work and smarts. And they represent the future for me.

So, you can call me “newsletter writer Chris Cillizza.” Or “YouTuber Chris Cillizza. Or “senior adviser Chris Cillizza.” Or just plain old “Chris Cillizza.” Any of those accurately describe where I am and what I am going. And, most importantly, they signal where I am looking: To the future.