As CEO of The Atlantic, Nicholas Thompson oversees a venerable magazine that has recently returned to profitability after several years of false starts, adding financial clout to its slew of star hires and considerable presence in the media landscape. Before beginning his career on the business side, having joined The Atlantic in 2021, Thompson can boast significant achievements working in newsrooms, including building NewYorker.com into a vital, digital presence before an award-winning stint as Wired editor-in-chief. But that’s not really what he wants to talk to Fortune about: He’s here to discuss plantar fasciitis.
The long-time runner is discussing his new book, The Running Ground, which only devotes a few pages to his journalistic career. Much more of it is about Thompson’s activities as a competitive runner (including setting the American record for men 45 and older in 2021, as excerpted in Fortune), and his relationship with his father, W. Scott Thompson. In 2017, Thompson eulogized his father—a political science professor, member of the Ford and Reagan administrations and the first openly gay presidential appointment—as having “lived a life that could fill a dozen novels, or perhaps a Shakespearean drama.” He told Fortune his father’s fate was a valuable lesson, going from a man with “sort of infinite prospects,” once thought of as potential presidential candidate, to someone “whose life is complete disarray.” Thompson said his father would always talk to him about this dynamic: “He who the gods wish to destroy, they first make promising.”
