Jonathan Thompson on Muck Rack

Jonathan Thompson

West Virginia
As seen in: High Country News, The Land Desk, CNN, MSN, Yahoo Life, Daily Mail, Irish Daily Mail, Yahoo News Malaysia, Aol, Substack, American Chemical Society, Yahoo Style Canada and
Jonathan P. Thompson: LandDesk.org; author of River of Lost Souls, Behind the Slickrock Curtain, Sagebrush Empire; contributing ed. @highcountrynews;

Get in touch with Jonathan

Contact Jonathan, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.

Learn more about Muck Rack

Actions

Share this page

Jonathan Thompson’s Biography

Read Full Bio →

Jonathan Thompson is a native Westerner with deep roots in southwestern Colorado. He is currently at work on a book about the Animas River in southwestern Colorado and the Gold King Mine spill of August 2015. He owned and edited the Silverton Standard & the Miner newspaper in the tiny town of Silverton, Colo., and was the editor-in-chief of High Country News from 2007 to 2010. After that he lived in Berlin, Germany, and then was a Ted Scripps fellow in environmental journalism at the Universit…

Jonathan Thompson’s Journalist Portfolio

See all 8 portfolio items →
Silverton's Gold King reckoning

Silverton's Gold King reckoning

On the morning of Aug. 5, 2015, a deep pool of acidic, metal-laden water was backed up behind debris in the L…

View article →
Lessons from boom and bust in New Mexico

Lessons from boom and bust in New Mexico

Wet snow splatters on my windshield as I drive from Durango, Colorado, toward Aztec, New Mexico, on a January…

View article →
The rise of the Sagebrush Sheriffs

The rise of the Sagebrush Sheriffs

On the morning of May 10, 2014, San Juan County Sheriff Rick Eldredge waited on horseback in the sagebrush of…

View article →
Unlocking the mystery of the Four Corners Methane Hot Spot

Unlocking the mystery of the Four Corners Methane Hot Spot

A silver van rolls slowly down a narrow road on the edge of the small town of Bayfield, Colorado, a farming-t…

View article →
Gold King Mine water was headed for the Animas, anyway

Gold King Mine water was headed for the Animas, anyway

If the media frenzy is any indication, the Upper Gold King Mine blowout of Aug. 5 has become the West's pollu…

View article →
When our river turned orange

When our river turned orange

"The question that is crowding upon Durango thick and fast is one of water. The mill slimes from Silverton ar…

View article →

Articles

San Juan Basin fossil fuel industries keep polluting, even as they fade away

|
By Jonathan Thompson
| The Land Desk
šŸ“ˆ Data Dump/Hydrocarbon Hoedown šŸ“Š An oil and gas well and the San Juan Generating coal power plant in 2022, just a few months before the coal plant was shuttered and demolished. The area is now home to a utility-scale solar plant, with two more on the way. Jonathan P. Thompson photo. The San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico was once one of the busiest fossil fuel extraction zones in the nation ā€” maybe even the world.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?

San Juan Basin fossil fuel industries keep polluting, even as they fade away

|
By Jonathan Thompson
| Substack
šŸ“ˆ Data Dump/Hydrocarbon Hoedown šŸ“Š An oil and gas well and the San Juan Generating coal power plant in 2022, just a few months before the coal plant was shuttered and demolished. The area is now home to a utility-scale solar plant, with two more on the way. Jonathan P. Thompson photo. The San Juan Basin in northwestern New Mexico was once one of the busiest fossil fuel extraction zones in the nation ā€” maybe even the world.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?

Data centers = heat factories

|
By Jonathan Thompson
| The Land Desk
Sunset and the Dolores River before it crosses the Utah state line. Jonathan P. Thompson photo. 🤖 Data Center Watch 👾 Heat-emitting Phoenix-area data centers next to already hot neighborhoods. Good thing a lot of those houses have swimming pools. They’ll need them. Source: Data Center Waste Heat as an Emerging Urban Thermal Hazard: First Field Measurements of Neighborhood-Scale Air Temperature Impacts, by David J. Sailor, Soroush Samareh Abolhassani, Eli P. Martin.
Open in Who Shared Issue with article?
See all 1,689 licensed articles (1,776 Total)

Interview

See all 21 answers →

What was your first job as a journalist?

I was the editor of my high school newspaper. Paying job? I was the reporter/photographer/etc. of the Silverton Standard & the Miner

Have you ever used a typewriter?

Yes! Electric typewriter back in junior high/high school and an electric typewriter with two-lines of memory in college.

How is social media changing news?

It's breaking down the old hierarchies, for sure. It's also radically changing how we communicate and receive breaking news.

Actions

Share this page

Is this you?

As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile

Get in touch with Jonathan

Contact Jonathan, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.

Learn more about Muck Rack
 •  Privacy  •  Terms  •  Security and Legal  •   •   •   • 

© 2026 Muck Rack

SOC 2® Certified