#311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED
The Tim Ferriss Show
The Odds of Being Hired in a Position Beyond Your Stature
"I did well in college, but I prepared for life extraordinarily badly," he says. "It was very strange and in retrospect, it's one of the things where I was I was treated kind of awfully." He recalls being kidnapped by a drug dealer who wanted him to distribute his drugs. The actor is now working on an HBO documentary about African slavery.
Nick Thompson (@nxthompson) is the editor-in-chief of WIRED. Under his leadership, Wired has launched a successful paywall, a Snapchat channel, and an AMP Stories edition; it has also been nominated for National Magazine Awards in design and feature writing.
Nick is a contributor for CBS News and regularly appears on CBS This Morning. He is also co-founder of The Atavist, a National Magazine Award-winning digital publication. Prior to joining Wired, Thompson served as editor of NewYorker.com from 2012 to 2017.
Before The New Yorker, Nick was a senior editor at Wired, where he assigned and edited the feature story that was the basis for the Oscar-winning film Argo. In 2009, his book The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War was published to critical acclaim. In February 2018, Thompson co-wrote WIRED's cover story Inside the Two Years That Shook Facebook -- and the World, an 11,000-word investigation based on reporting with more than 50 current and former Facebook employees.
In this conversation, we cover a wide range of topics, questions, and skills, including:
- What makes a good pitch?
- How does a good features writer (or editor) "map" a story?
- How does writing get optioned for feature film, and what are important deal points?
- How can publishers (and website or blog owners) hire and pay good long-form writers?
- And much more...
Please enjoy!
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