WORT welcomes Thom Jones as our next Technology and Facilities Maintenance Director.
Thom comes to WORT with a lifetime of experience wrangling technology. Or as Thom puts it, “Been working in IT since IT was just short for Italy.”
He was the IT Manager at Isthmus Publishing for more than a decade, where he overhauled their website and brought decades of the paper’s archives online. He managed their server and desktop administration, as well as their network, databases, security, and IT infrastructure, and their mobile technology for events. Thom was also the sole technical support for Red Card Media, the student meal plan accepted at hundreds of restaurants nationwide. He’s well versed in Unix and Linux as well as Windows.
Thom is also a musician and writer and looks forward to working with all the creative people who frequent WORT. (He’s played everything from trombone to hair metal, ask him.) Having steered Isthmus through the years, Thom understands the challenge of helping local media navigate new technology. As an avid music collector himself, he reflects, “I bought CDs to replace vinyl and then converted the CDs to digital and yet have all three versions still.” Just wait until we show him the reel-to-reel tapes in the basement.
Working for a newspaper also grounded him in the realities of deadlines and the importance of our local media outlets. And the need for coffee. Lots of coffee.
Thom will be responsible for managing the technology infrastructure at WORT as well as the building, including the studio equipment, station computers and network, digital storage and archives, website infrastructure and broadcast equipment.
Thom begins March 18th.