A Message From Your New Editor

Hello, readers of io9! As you grew to become conscious final week, io9’s great managing editor, Jill Pantozzi, ascended to a superb place of her personal and stated goodbye after 4 years guiding the ship. Which means it’s time for a brand new pair of palms on the helm, or at the least palms that may wave on the particular person at the helm, telling them to go quick.

So hello! Yes I, James Whitbrook, am io9’s new deputy editor. I’ve been writing on the web site since 2014, once I was recruited by our beloved leaders, Charlie Jane Anders and Annalee Newitz, who determined they had been so sick of me commenting that they’d let me have a go on the precise factor. And right here we’re! Let me inform you, it’s a weird expertise to have gone on this journey, via the unbelievable management of Charlie Jane, Annalee, Rob and Jill, to see trusted pals and voices of the location come and go, to be sued by Hulk Hogan, then bought by Univision, and survive to today. They didn’t even have new Star Wars films scheduled once I began working right here! I assume we don’t have many proper now both, however nonetheless!

I hope that my historical past with the location lends a way of ease to this transition interval for our readers, the individuals who have saved io9 trundling alongside this wild highway. Our readership has by no means been afraid to talk its thoughts, to share considerations, to have a good time the nerdy issues all of us love, and make it price constructing a web site to draw them to within the first place. I’ve been at io9 lengthy sufficient to know what it means to our readers. I’ve additionally been right here lengthy sufficient to know that change is commonly met with a wholesome degree of apprehension—whether or not it’s a brand new Doctor on Doctor Who, a truckload of Marvel bulletins, or a brand new editor at your favourite web site. As io9 strikes ahead, I’ll information this ship assured I’m making a web site that has individuals excited to test in day-after-day, and who will maintain us to the identical excessive requirements as at all times.

There has by no means been a much bigger or higher time to be writing about sci-fi and fantasy, and the cultures and firms creating it. There is a lot stuff—maybe an excessive amount of stuff—to speak about, share, critique and have a good time. But it’s additionally a time when there may be nice trigger for concern. Corporate consciousness of the fandom cultures we love is at an all time excessive, and the huge companies behind our beloved franchises are working to take advantage of that loyalty and translate it into revenues: The return of the walled gardens of studio-owned streaming platforms; the way in which studios management entry and create narratives to drown out criticism and create feverish, countless hype; the way in which the creators of the characters we love have been exploited as studios make billions and supply little in return. In the age of media oversaturation, it’s extra necessary than ever to concentrate on the companies behind the media we eat.

As a lot as io9 is a voice that celebrates the issues we love, I hope it would additionally assist our readers perceive the way in which our favourite reveals, books, comics, TV sequence and video games get made. A spot that fosters a wholesome sense of neighborhood, and creates solidarity with the creators that deliver these great, foolish, heartbreaking, petrifying worlds to life. A spot that may at all times have a good time loving these adventures and characters—and maintain them to the fireplace once we need them to be even higher.

Above all, I hope you’ll be a part of me and the remainder of our group via all of it. My everlasting because of the most effective commenters a web site may ask for—let’s get again to it, lets?

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