Transcript
Nicholas Thompson (0:00)
If the writer can only jump over a six foot bar, your job is not to like, try to get them over a seven foot bar. Your job is to get them over that six foot bar. You've got to figure out what is the best version of the story, given their skills, given the idea, given the time, and you got to get them there. Arrest the journalists you like, buy the publications, shut down the critical publications. Right? Like that is part of the process of democracy to autocracy. I am going to fight that because I believe in democracy. Well, there's something nice in the continuum that the Atlantic has played this role. We were founded to help create conversations to help prevent a civil war. And Martin Luther King published a letter from a Birmingham jail. And like, there is something important about keeping this publication having good, accurate journalism matter. You know, my goal is what is the thing that I can do that will increase the number of good stories? Because I think that's important.
Podcast Host (0:39)
I've had a few people ask me if I'm a journalist.
Nicholas Thompson (0:41)
What do you say?
Podcast Host (0:42)
I usually say like, I don't think so.
Nicholas Thompson (0:44)
If your primary commitment is to your audience, you're a journalist, right? If your primary commitment is to the guest or to an advertiser, maybe you're not. It's been 33 years since like I actually cared even 1 millionth of 1% whether I was ahead or behind anybody in a race. This is one of the funnier things I remember. I think it was Jeff Goldberg, the editor in chief. He's like, you know what was really surprising about your book? Like, you've been this elite runner for like 30 years and you've won three races, right? Like, yeah, there are 40,000 people in a marathon. One wins 39,000, 999.
Podcast Host (1:07)
Don't.
Nicholas Thompson (1:07)
Right.
Podcast Host (1:08)
There's a part where you're talking about a boat that never touched water, the little canoe that you run by. And this is also.
Nicholas Thompson (1:12)
You're the first person to ask me about this. I like that detail matters so much to me. And like, no one has asked me about this thing. So thank you.
Podcast Host (1:17)
Welcome to dialectic episode 45 with Nicholas Thompson. Nick is the CEO of the Atlantic. Nick has spent his career focused on journalism in America. Obviously that is especially true today at the Atlantic. But that also includes extended time at Wired where he was the editor in chief as well as an editor and an earlier part of his career. And the New Yorker where he was an editor and ran thenewyorker.com Nick is also an incredibly serious runner. I discovered him in the fall when he published an excerpt from his most recent book, the Running Ground, about his relationship with his father and his relationship to running. One of the things I most admire about Nick is the way he combines deep focus and consistency and discipline with just an kind of unending curiosity about the world. He is an explorer in some ways and a machine in others. The latter obviously applies to his world. Beating Running I hope you were inspired in some dimension, whether it be to take stories more seriously, to push yourself to do things that are really hard, or even to wonder about what other versions of you you haven't discovered yet. Before the conversation with Nick, I like to think Notion. Notion is the presenting partner of Dialectic and a huge part of what makes the show possible. They recently launched a new campaign under the idea of thinking together, and I think that is so representative of what the product is. The goal is not to automate away people. The goal is to build amazing things together. And as AI increasingly moves into every crevice of how we work, being able to have a tool that from a principal standpoint is thinking about how AI can make us all better together. And that actually lives in the place where you do your work with your colleagues, whether that be writing, analyzing, developing, shipping is remarkably powerful for me. I think it's amazing to have a tool that, whether it be Notion, AI or custom agents, that is built from the ground up to help you automate the busy work and spend more of your time on the work that deeply matters. If you haven't used Notion in a while, you can learn more@notion.com dialectic and if you're doing interesting things with notion agents or otherwise, please share them with me. I would love to learn more. Thanks again to Notion and here is my conversation with Nicholas Thompson. Nicholas Thompson, thank you for being here.
