How to save a magazine, with The Atlantic’s Nicholas Thompson
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
When Nicholas Thompson took over as CEO of The Atlantic five years ago, the iconic magazine was in financial trouble. Now, its profitable and subscriber and revenue numbers are growing. Thompson joins host Jeff Berman to talk about the impressive turnaround, how media companies can weather AI disruption, and lessons from the world of long distance running.
His new memoir is The Running Ground: A father, a son, and the simplest of sports: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/678434/the-running-ground-by-nicholas-thompson/
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Transcript
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| 0:50.8 | This is fun, by way. Thanks, you have me on. |
| 0:53.7 | Thrill to do it. Did you run up here, by the way? |
| 0:55.6 | I was going to run. It's like a little, like, then you stink during the interview, and it's like not great. Yeah. I should have done it. I just should have done it. You want to re-rack? You can. Yeah, yeah. Can we reschedule this for 11.30? I'm going to go home and run. Nick Thompson didn't run to the studio for our interview, but he runs almost everywhere else. |
| 1:13.6 | He runs marathons, old. Nick Thompson didn't run to the studio for our interview, but he runs almost everywhere else. |
| 1:13.6 | He runs marathons, ultra-marathons, and most days he runs to work at his job as CEO of the Atlantic. |
| 1:21.6 | When you saw subscriptions actually drop, was there a moment where you had a crisis of conviction about this? Yeah, totally. I was terrified. |
| 1:29.9 | You got to have incredible talent at every position. It's like this huge push. There are fires |
| 1:35.1 | burning when you're going home. Can you believe it? Such an idiot. And then you go back to |
| 1:39.7 | this is totally going to be amazing. There are so many easy ways. I'm supposed to know what to do. |
| 1:44.2 | I have no idea what to do. |
| 1:45.2 | Sorry, we made a mistake. |
| 1:46.5 | But you have to time it right. |
| 1:48.2 | Oops. |
... |
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