Data tells a story. Here’s one that you can only read in ‘Fast Company’

When you cover innovation, the pressure is on to innovate. This involves more than just constantly scanning the worlds of business and culture for signs of the next big thing—and reporting on it before (and better than) our competitors do. It means being innovative in how we present that coverage to you—on digital platforms, at our live events, and right here in the print magazine.

This brings me to the work of Andrew Thompson. Thompson is a data journalist. But that term, an increasingly common one in newsrooms these days, doesn’t quite capture what he does.

In the summer of 2023, Thompson told editorial director Jill Bernstein that he wanted to expand upon reporting he had done on the indie-music platform Bandcamp. Specifically, he wanted to make the data-driven case that tiny Bandcamp, with about $20 million in revenue at the time, made more money than Spotify . . . which had a market cap of about $26 billion. It was a provocative journalistic impulse, and he delivered a story that marshaled some compelling numbers to prove his point. It also doubled as a treatise on the nature of value itself and changed the way I think about business altogether.

In the year-plus since, Thompson has been working with Bernstein and Fast Company to deliver a series of stories unlike anything you’ll find anywhere else. The projects vary—from lighthearted posts about the best and worst fast-food franchises in America to an analysis of where the venture capital is flowing—but they have one thing in common: Thompson’s approach to mining data in clever ways and then making sense of what that data reveals.

This issue, we are proud to present his most ambitious project yet: “Where the Clean Energy Jobs Are.” Our second installment in a series that began last spring with a study of design jobs, this story offers a comprehensive look at employment opportunities in what we non-hyperbolically call “the world’s most important industry.” Thompson crunched data from more than 26,000 job listings—across solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, and more—and consulted industry experts on how best to organize this trove of information for maximum usefulness. (For the full methodology, read more here.) The project got a research assist from editorial intern Janya Sundar, and it would have been visually overwhelming if not for the brilliance of design director Alice Alves and freelance designer Ming Husan Lee (who created the interactive version you can find on our site).

I say all this not just to sing my colleagues’ praises but to spotlight the innovative journalism we do at Fast Company. We’ve got more big plans for 2025. I look forward to sharing them with you.