Hi, I'm Jon

I help people tell stories online. Mostly that means working with journalists to try new formats, build an audience that will pay for their work, and sharpen how they show up online. I used to work at Ghost, Hotjar and Birmingham City University, and I’ve been making things for the web since 1997.

Stack and tools

I tend to lean towards using Ghost at the centre of things, and build out interesting ideas around that using whatever suits the job—but really I'm agnostic; I've worked with dozens of off-the-shelf CMS tools (including WordPress) and bespoke ones too.

Currently

Working with The Quarry, a Guernsey-based publication, on innovation projects.
Watching Station Eleven.
Parenting a tiny kitten.

Latest from the blog

building with ghost

GEO in Ghost

Back in July, Ghost launched some features to support GEO. What are these features and what are they doing for your site right now? GEO, if you're not familiar with it, is "Generative Engine Optimisation"—helping content to get found, indexed, and used by LLMs. So,

Running

WIP (mini) Backyard Ultra 2026

In which I "win" a race for the very first time.

building with ghost

GCTools update: seed demo

seed-demo has shipped — it's the latest feature I've added to GCTools. seed-demo allows you to quickly spin up a Ghost site with dummy content. ⁉️GC what now? GCTools is a collection of command line utilities for working on content in Ghost. It's

Writing

Book

101 Things Birmingham Gave the World

You can trace anything back to the city of 1,000 trades. We traced back the key ones like the toilet, nuclear war, and running a marathon. We later turned this book into a stage show. Weird, right? Foreword by Stewart Lee.

Buy the book

Book

Birmingham: It's Not Shit

50 things that delight about Brum. A love letter to a city that's better than it's given credit for. Co-written with Jon Bounds and Danny Smith, foreword by Adrian Chiles, cover by Foka Wolf.

Buy the book

Website

Paradise Circus

A Birmingham miscellany: the blog where both books started, and where we still occasionally write about Birmingham's history and culture.

Read my posts

Podcasts

Podcast

Beware of the Leopard

We went through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in alphabetical order, then scribbled new entries in the margins. Six years of towels, tea and the meaning of life (2017–2023).

Listen

Podcast

You Don't Look Like a Runner

Weekly coverage of fitness, running and tech from 2017–2022. Next week's episode drops soon, honest.

Listen

Guest appearances

Have me on your podcast

I'm an experienced podcaster with a decent mic. I'm available to talk about higher education, Birmingham, running, Hitchhiker's, Guernsey, web history and more.

See the pitch