Matt Thompson
As Director of Vertical Initiatives (and Mischief) at NPR, Matt Thompson works with teams across the company to guide the development of topic-focused verticals covering race, ethnicity and culture; education; and global health and development.
Outside his work at NPR, Thompson teaches media and technology management as an adjunct professor at American University. He serves as the vice-chairman of the board of the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative journalism nonprofit. He's also the co-founder of an organization called Spark Camp, which convenes diverse groups of leaders from a variety of industries.
Before coming to NPR in 2010, Thompson served as the interim Online Community Manager for the Knight Foundation. In May 2009, he completed a Donald W. Reynolds Fellowship at the Reynolds Journalism Institute; where he explored creating context-centric news websites with results that have been widely cited in discussions about online journalism's future.
For four years prior to the Reynolds Fellowship, Thompson served as the deputy web editor for the Minneapolis Star Tribune. His work leading the development, community and production of a socially networked arts-and-entertainment website vita.mn contributed to the site being honored with a Digital Edge Award, "an Edgie," from the Newspaper Association of America' New Media Federation. Also at the Star Tribune, Thompson managed technology and interactivity-related projects for StarTribune.com, from creating an internal taxonomy to transforming the online opinion section into a blog.
As an online reporter/producer for the Fresno Bee from 2004-05, Thompson's work on multimedia projects earned him a first- and third-place 2004 Best of the West award. At the Bee, he led an internal advisory committee exploring the paper's strategies for acquiring new audiences.
Thompson was the Poynter Institute's 2003-04 Naughton Fellow for Online Reporting and Writing. While at Poynter, he and his colleague Robin Sloan produced the Flash movie EPIC 2014. Presenting a picture of the media past set 10 years in the future, the movie was written up in The New York Times, Financial Times, USA Today, the Guardian, and on MSNBC. In 2010, Thompson completed a four-year term on Poynter's National Advisory Board.
A graduate with honors in English from Harvard College, Thompson wrote his senior thesis on the television show "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." He blogs at Snarkmarket.com, jogs along the Potomac and occasionally sings barbershop music with friends.
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In part one of a roundtable on the Podcast Everyone's Talking About, Code Switch editor Matt Thompson makes the brave and foolhardy decision to predict the conclusion. -
An analysis of federal data by an Oregon State University sociologist echoes earlier research suggesting that white inmates are underrepresented at private prisons relative to public facilities.
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We dive into four themes we saw during our month-long exploration of how race plays out in the dating world. -
There are two things people agree on when they talk about racial/cultural preferences in dating. First, many of us have them. Second, that makes many of us uncomfortable. Beyond that, everything is contentious. -
The drug has been intertwined with race and ethnicity since well before the word "marijuana" was coined. Turns out there's an awful lot we don't know about the recent history of the cannabis plant. -
A scathing performance review of an al-Qaida employee offers another reminder of how bureaucratic large, illicit organizations can be. News reports have shown that even drug traffickers keep receipts.
