Hi! I’m
Matt Thompson.

We launched Headway with a multi-part project called Hindsight. Anchored by a magisterial Michael Kimmelman essay, the launch project invited readers to play a trivia game guessing at the outcomes of predictions made in the pages of the Times five or more years prior.

This project led by reporter Will Evans and a team of contributors across the newsroom was a finalist for the Pulitzer. As editor-in-chief, publishing it meant facing down legal threats from the governor of a state, which our chief counsel valiantly stood behind us in rebuffing.

Getting to watch Jon Batiste record The Battle Hymn of the Republic, the inaugural theme of Radio Atlantic, was the privilege of a lifetime. Seeing the podcast I hosted debut at number one on iTunes was icing on the cake.

In 2013, I worked with Kat Chow, then the digital producer for Code Switch, to program a Twitter account live-tweeting the events of 1963 as though they were happening in real time. We heard on a daily basis from students and educators across the country.

For a decade, I emceed and co-organized an event called Spark Camp, that we came to describe as "everyone you never knew you always wanted to meet." In 2017, we wrote up a comprehensive playbook of our approach to producing this one-of-a-kind gathering.

In 2004, my colleague and friend Robin Sloan and I created a speculative short film about the past decade in media, set ten years in the future. YouTube didn't yet exist, but the video was mirrored and spread on countless servers across the world, and continues to be shown in classrooms today.