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.”
This gives him perspective, Thompson said.
“I never, even though The Atlantic‘s doing great, I never am too confident that it’s gonna stay that way,” he said. He added he’s learned to like all the pain that running brings him. “I’ve been running most of my life. I started when I was 5 or 6,” Thompson said in a recent Zoom call. He said he got “very serious” in high school (a passage from the book describes running “in a primal way, screaming inside,” on a track in Deerfield, Mass.) before becoming even more passionate in his 30s, and then again in his 40s. “It’s become an essential part of my life and something I do every day,” he said, pivoting his camera to show his running clothes and shoes, gloves and hat, even his heart rate monitor.
On the one hand, he said running can be a “way to build good mental habits,” a form of meditation or a way to create mental space during the day. But in another way, the aches and pains that come from daily movement are part of the point. “I don’t have a sweeping world philosophy,” Thompson said when asked if running has a spiritual component, but it does have “deeper metaphors” that can inform a career.
“One of the things that I believe—and I believe very strongly—is that, you know, in running, it goes in waves, right?” Thompson makes the point that you just don’t, as a runner, set a personal record for several consecutive marathons. “You do well and then you do badly,” and that’s the way it’s supposed to go. Sometimes you do badly because you lose focus, but other times it’s because you get plantar fasciitis, or you had the wrong meal the night before the race. Once you realize you have to deal with all the things that go wrong in your running life, he added, “it changes the way you think about life at all moments.” When you’re up, he added, don’t get too cocky, and when you’re down, don’t get too down.
Which brings us to his famous firing from 60 Minutes.
Fired on his first day of work
“I was pretty fortunate to have had a lot of professional failure in my 20s,” Thompson told Fortune, referring to the story, many times repeated, about not making it past one day at the legendary TV newsmagazine in the late 1990s. The outlines of the story are well known, about legendary producer Phil Scheffler quickly sussing out Thompson’s total lack of TV credentials and dismissing him.
As Thompson retold the story, he described being summoned to Scheffler’s office to discuss how he’d work as the associate for one of the producers for Steve Kroft, the legendary correspondent. He had moved to New York, bought “nice suits” and come with a good attitude, but when Scheffler asked who he was and what had he done, Thompson responded simply he hadn’t done anything in TV. Scheffler asked in response, “Why are you here?”
“I don’t know,” Thompson replied. “You hired me.” Then came the sudden termination, and Thompson said he didn’t realize just quite how wrong a decision that was at the time. “You’re not supposed to just fire someone after you hire them.” He was just a kid, and the people who hired him were thinking “Whoa, I guess we made a mistake.” Looking back, Thompson said, he had no power at all in the situation.
Thompson laughs when asked what advice he’d give to Gen Z, which is famously struggling with the entry-level job market of 2025, saying it would not be to get fired as quickly and prominently as he did.
“My advice is, if you do get fired, to just keep moving forward and to not to get too down on yourself,” he said.
He repeated the relatively standard recommendation to follow your passions in college, study what you want, get whatever degree is “most exciting,” but once you move beyond that, really think about where your career should be.
“Find a spot to work where you have great colleagues and where you can learn from people who are smarter than you, and go into a place where you will have both colleagues who will rise with you as your career goes on and mentors who will teach you how to be better at your job,” he said. This is what led to his redemption from the 60 Minutes fiasco, he added, a detail he doesn’t believe has ever been reported before.
Fifteen years after his humiliating termination, Thompson found himself at a Livingston Award ceremony where his New Yorker work was being praised onstage by one of those good colleagues he found after 60 Minutes, and none other than Kroft was a key player in the awards. Kroft walked into the elevator and recognized Thompson—only from that night’s speech, not from Scheffler’s office. “I worked for you for an hour, and I got fired,” Thompson told Kroft about the “funny connection” they actually shared.
Kroft’s response was immediate: “Steve looks at me and goes, ‘You’re that kid? I couldn’t believe that [expletive] fired you. And I’m so sorry we didn’t back you up.” (Messages to Steve Kroft were not returned.)
Thompson said it had apparently become lore around 60 Minutes about the kid who had been kicked to the curb. Thompson recalled he was “really happy” to have this moment of serendipity, while adding CBS News has been very supportive of The Running Ground.
In retrospect, the experience gave Thompson what he sees as a healthy kind of paranoia. Even when things are going well, he said, “I never am too confident that it’s gonna stay that way.”
When reminded it’s not unlike the plantar fasciitis that can flare up for a runner, Thompson agreed it’s not dissimilar. When he overtrains in running, he gets tendonitis in his knee, “and I can now feel it coming on pretty early,” which means he dials back his running, uses a foam roller and puts CBD cream on his knee. When plantar fasciitis comes on out of nowhere, he does a similar routine, using a foam roller, doing Achilles stretches, putting Castor Oil on his feet when he sleeps.
“There is all of that wind pushing you backwards, but if you are smarter about your training and the way you live and all the choices you make, you can kind of go faster into the headwind,” Thompson said. As in running and in jobs and in life, “you just have to learn how to cope with it.”
Politics8 years ago