“I was like, we'll do that through books at the Atlantic. We'll figure out, we build that. It generates like 7000 dollars a year, right? It doesn't matter.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Nick Thompson
Disclosure
Thompson: OpenAI deal includes SearchGPT planning sessions and content licensing
“And with OpenAI, we said, hey, here we are, let's talk. And they said, great, let's make a deal. We will pay you for the right to license your content and the right to have RAG. We will include you in sort of planning sessions as we figure out the future of se…”
Nick ThompsonJan 15, 2026▶ 13:40How to save a magazine (with The Atlantic's Nick Thompson) | Masters of Scale
AssertionSupported
Thompson: Anthropic recently paid out billions of dollars to authors
“Anthropic just had to pay out billions of dollars to authors.”
Nick ThompsonJan 15, 2026▶ 19:17How to save a magazine (with The Atlantic's Nick Thompson) | Masters of Scale
Insight
Thompson: Paywalls must dynamically guess subscription propensity across traffic sources
“The goal when you have a paywall is if someone's not going to subscribe, you want them to read the article, right? And if someone is going to subscribe, you want them to pay to read the article. And the problem is you can't know. You can't like interview every…”
Nick ThompsonJan 15, 2026▶ 8:44How to save a magazine (with The Atlantic's Nick Thompson) | Masters of Scale
PredictionOpen · timeframe Jan 2031
Thompson: AI publisher compensation legislation won't happen in the US
“Second point of leverage would be legislation, right? It's not going to happen in the United States, you know, but it might happen in Europe. It could happen in Australia, right?”
Nick ThompsonJan 15, 2026▶ 19:04How to save a magazine (with The Atlantic's Nick Thompson) | Masters of Scale
Disclosure
Thompson: Media CEOs should only comment on industry issues, not politics
“My view is that as the leader of a media organization, if I'm gonna make a public statement on an issue, there's like a pretty limited range. I should make public statements about AI and scraping. Copyright, freedom of speech, right? Freedom of the press, righ…”
Nick ThompsonJan 15, 2026▶ 23:43How to save a magazine (with The Atlantic's Nick Thompson) | Masters of Scale
AssertionSupported
Thompson: The Atlantic now has 1.46 million subscribers and strong profits
“And now we're at 1.46, right, and we're making, I can't say exactly how much we're making, but we're making good money.”
Nick ThompsonJan 15, 2026▶ 11:27How to save a magazine (with The Atlantic's Nick Thompson) | Masters of Scale
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