#311: Nick Thompson -- Editor-In-Chief of WIRED
The Tim Ferriss Show
How to Develop a Sharper Eye for Editing
For people who want to develop an eye for editing. Do you become a good writer first and then a good editor? Or can you do it the other way around? Find a writer you love for whatever publication and study them. Think about what exactly are they doing. Also, most of my training in this was done as an editor, but you could also do it as a reader,. which is to map a story.
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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