It’s Episode 15 of Press Publish, the Nieman Lab podcast!
My guest today is Matt Thompson. Since earlier this year, Matt has been deputy editor of TheAtlantic.com, But you might know him from some of his previous career stops. He spent a few years at NPR, heading up some of its most interesting digital initiatives, like Project Argo. Maybe you know him from Snarkmarket, the influential group blog he led with fellow smart guys Robin Sloan and Tim Carmody. Or you may just know him as a provocative thinker on the shape of modern media.
Matt’s one of the key people behind Notes, a new section The Atlantic launched last month that promises to bring blogging back to The Atlantic. It’s an interesting attempt to recapture some of the looser, voicier, more conversational structures of the early 2000s — some of which has been lost in the rise of social media and commercialized online news.We talked about how blogging seeped into the DNA of today’s news, whether Wikipedia-ing the news is still a thing, and how Slack is creating a new context for editorial voice. Here’s our conversation.
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[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/niemanlab/PressPublish015.mp3]
Matt Thompson (his site still has an old bio on it, alas)
@mthomps
The Atlantic
The Atlantic’s Notes section
Chris Bodenner, Atlantic senior editor
“Welcome to Notes” (August 27, 2015)
“The Atlantic is returning to blogging” (August 27, 2015)
“The People Formerly Known as the Audience” (June 27, 2006)
J.J. Gould, editor of TheAtlantic.com
“For the Golden Horde” (December 22, 2010)