Biography
Derek Thompson is a senior editor at The Atlantic magazine and a weekly news analyst for NPR’s “Here and Now.” He was born in McLean, Va., in 1986, and he graduated from Northwestern University, in 2008, with a triple major in journalism, political science, and legal studies. He hasn’t done much with the latter two. In 2015, he wrote the cover story “A World Without Work” about the future of jobs and technology. “Hit Makers,” his first book on the secret histories of pop culture hits and the science of popularity, comes out in February 2017. He has appeared on Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list and Time’s “140 Best Twitter Feeds.” He lives in Manhattan.
What’s one website or book you think more people should know about?
A Matter of Taste, by Stanley Lieberson
What is one Twitter account that we should all follow?
Conor Sen @conorsen
What’s an emerging trend we should keep our eye on?
The political tension between egalitarianism and multiculturalism. Equality and diversity are, arguably, the two great American experiments. Can they coexist?
What’s one prediction you have for our industry that will come true in 5 years?
Ludicrously profitable yet fearful of their relations with the largely Eastcoast media, Google and Facebook experiment with ways to fund local and national journalism.