Emerson Collective Backing New Project to Encourage Civil Online Conversation

Laurene Powell Jobs’s Emerson Collective is backing a new effort to encourage more civil conversation online, according to people familiar with the project.

The project—which is in its early days—is being led by Nick Thompson, CEO of The Atlantic, and Raffi Krikorian, Emerson’s chief technology officer. The duo recently hired Wired’s executive editor for news, Brian Barrett, and are looking to hire two more engineers. Barrett’s departure from Wired was announced at an all-hands meeting of the magazine’s staff earlier this week.

Thompson is remaining in his current role at The Atlantic, according to one of the people familiar with the project. Those people stressed that the group isn’t trying to launch a social networking site.