March 28, 2024

The Atlantic Plucks Wired Magazine’s Top Editor as Its New C.E.O.

In a 2019 article for Wired, Mr. Thompson argued that persuading readers to pay for articles was good for journalism, as well as a publication’s chances at making money. “When your business depends on subscriptions, your economic success depends on publishing stuff your readers love — not just stuff they click,” he wrote. “It’s good to align one’s economic and editorial imperatives!”

Before going into journalism, Mr. Thompson worked as a street musician in New York and released three albums of acoustic guitar instrumentals. He is also the author of the 2009 book “The Hawk and the Dove,” a dual biography of the prominent Cold War figures George Kennan and Paul Nitze (who was Mr. Thompson’s maternal grandfather).

During his time as the digital editor of The New Yorker, Mr. Thompson moonlighted as a media entrepreneur, helping to found The Atavist, a digital magazine and publishing company that was later sold to the web publisher Automattic.

As the top editor of Wired — which got its start in 1993 as a publication known for its embrace of all things tech — he led coverage that was often critical of the industry, including a 2018 cover piece, co-written by Mr. Thompson and Fred Vogelstein, on the turmoil inside Facebook. The cover image was a photo illustration of a bruised and battered Mark Zuckerberg.

“I wanted to be covering tech in the smartest, fairest way possible,” Mr. Thompson said. “You don’t want to be anti-tech for the sake of anti-tech.”

In his new role, Mr. Thompson said, “there will be a line drawn” between The Atlantic’s business operations and the journalists led by Mr. Goldberg. He added that he did not anticipate that he would report or write for a while.

The Atlantic started charging readers for online content last fall, about two years after Ms. Powell Jobs’s philanthropic organization, Emerson Collective, took a majority stake in the publication. With that change in strategy, the venerable magazine joined a wave of legacy media companies that have sought to bring in more revenue from digital subscribers than from advertisers.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/03/business/media/the-atlantic-nicholas-thompson-ceo.html

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