Episode Details

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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This podcast is also brought to you by Peloton, which has become a staple of my daily routine. I picked up this bike after seeing