I wanted to give an official welcome and formally introduce Ian Ellis-Jones (@ianellisjones) to our audience!
Ian is coming on as our head of audience development, a critical position for the present and the future of TWZ. This will include executing a full-spectrum social media strategy, being master of ceremonies for our incredible comments section, and bringing his fantastic interpretive graphics skills to our editorial team. The latter will include establishing a new section on TWZ’s homepage under a segment called Actionable Intel.
Actionable Intel will feature short-form content that will be graphic-driven. This will include charts of deployed forces, such as our new capital ship tracker, as well as satellite imagery analysis and more. In other words, Ian will be bringing a whole new kind of storytelling to TWZ that is quicker to consume and visually focused.
To give you an idea of how talented Ian is at graphical representations of complex things, check out his Epic Fury battle map:
A little bit about Ian:
Ian is a social media strategist and OSINT analyst and researcher. Before joining TWZ, he was the creator of IEJ Media, a national security-focused media brand, where his work appeared in various publications including The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, Fox News, Newsweek, Task and Purpose, and more. Prior to entering the defense media space, he was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs where he worked with Technology, Media, and Telecom clients.
Ian is replacing Kyle Gunn for the social media and commenting section moderation side of things. Kyle is now the host of Task and Purpose‘s YouTube channel. He is an incredible guy, and we will miss him.
Also, just as a programming note, we are continuing to expand our YouTube operation with a mix of new content, the flagship of which is our Special Access series of on-location, hands-on reporting, hosted by our Jamie Hunter. We hope to transition this out of the pilot stage and into serialized production soon. Please be sure to follow us on YouTube. There is a lot of great content over there and much more impressive additions coming, including entirely new segments that could feature some of the names you see around here daily.
In addition to X and Facebook, where TWZ has always been, be sure to also check out our Instagram, LinkedIn, and Bluesky accounts, where Ian will be sharing more of our stories.
We are also in the process of making some other key hires as TWZ continues to expand and evolve. A subscription option is also finally on the horizon. More to come on all this and more soon.
Finally, I am so busy that I am not able to interact as much as I would like. This is one drawback of the growth we have seen while still maintaining a small and agile team that has been absolutely crushed by the wave after wave of major news events. But it is important for me to tell you how thankful I am to all of you for reading, sharing, commenting, and reaching out to us directly. On my worst, most tired day doing this crazy job in this place we all built together, I pinch myself. That I am able to do this, with this team, with this level of editorial independence, and in our unique voice, is truly unprecedented in the modern media landscape.
Thank you all for your continued support.
Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com