We’re a journalist-owned partnership, creating the world’s best in-depth, independent aviation journalism in our areas of expertise. We’re up front in what we write, the way we write it, and the way we operate. We offer deep expertise, stories that inform and entertain you, and a media outlet you can trust. We’re influential, not influencers, and we’re beholden to only our readers: no big media owners, no fintech backers, no external advertising networks, no PR teams.
The people and principles behind The Up Front
Our editor in chief and lead reporter is John Walton, a widely respected industry journalist with a deep understanding of this part of aviation, and a wealth of expertise across some of the biggest — and some of the smallest, most specialised — names in media. As we grow, we’ll be bringing in other experts in their fields from across the world, and we’re planning to support a new generation of cadet journalists as we grow sustainably.
Our publisher is Gareth Edwards, who writes under the name John Bull. He has worked across both B2B and B2C digital publishing for over twenty years, leading on digital publishing for both international publishers and startups. He is also an award-winning transport journalist, recognised for his expert analysis on the impact of politics and technology on transport systems and logistics.
To create The Up Front, we’re changing the journalism model, creating a new media outlet that’s sustainably funded for the long term on a hybrid structure. Our primary funding is from readers like you through individual subscriptions, and by readers working in the industry through company subscriptions. We’re planning that roughly half our work will be exclusive to our subscribers, with the other half available to read for free. We’re also funded by an unusually simple and intentionally nonintrusive single weekly advertiser slot, with our advertising team walled off from our editorial team.
We’re also changing the way media operates, especially around technology, ethics and practices. We’re digital experts, having been part of the launch teams for numerous successful outlets and startups before. This time, we’re doing it the way we’ve always wanted, with all the benefits of 2025 technology.
The benefit: we’re able to bring you beautifully designed and carefully crafted stories that are a pleasure to read and worthy of your time. We've intentionally designed The Up Front to avoid the worst of modern media, like popups asking to send you email or steal your attention through browser notifications, autoplay video, or ugly flashing ads. Instead, we offer you clean text, presented in a way that you can read, images that illustrate our writing, and graphics that help you understand what’s going on.
You can find out more about our editorial philosophy and principles — and how you can support our work — on our Why We Write page.
We’re not just aviation experts, we’re technologists as well, and we want to bring you the best of both worlds
In many instances, the choice of platform or technology that a publisher makes can no longer be seen as neutral. Nowhere is that more clear than in journalism in the 2020s.
We are proud that The Up Front and all of our supporting digital infrastructure (like our email servers, data storage and collaboration tools) are either self-hosted and managed, or use trusted third parties who have policies that align with our values.
We reject platforms and technologies where our use would represent tacit support for — or tolerance of — the views of their owners or major funders where we disagree fundamentally with those views and the impact they have on the world.
We’re very selective in the socials we operate: we’re on Bluesky as our network of choice and use its atproto as our commenting system, curating a community of thoughtful feedback on our work and elevating other voices. We also have a LinkedIn page, because we understand its importance for our industry audience.
Perhaps more importantly, we don’t use toxic socials like Instagram, Facebook, Threads or X, which drive really unproductive behaviour in media outlets, journalists, readers and companies.
We choose our technical backend and partners carefully, selecting independent European vendors rather than US-based Big Tech, for ethical reasons, for data privacy, and because we care about supporting the good parts of the digital sector in the same way we know our subscribers care about supporting the good parts of the media sector.
A quick note on artificial intelligence, and especially generative artificial intelligence, or gen AI. As well as being journalists, we’re digital natives and technologists, but we are ethically and professionally opposed to the idea that gen AI as it exists today or in the foreseeable future in our industry can be anything more than a slop-regurgitating plagiarism machine that makes its users less informed, not more informed. That’s anathema to us.
We commit to never knowingly using gen AI in what we write. We’re realistic, though, that matters get more complicated with image processing, and especially the line between the computer-generated rendering images companies create to illustrate products in their design stage. We seek to avoid gen AI in these cases wherever possible, and will always seek another option. If there’s ever a situation where we think the better option is to show it to you, we’ll flag it clearly.
In every way possible, we prevent any of the data belonging to our readers, interviewees and writers from being used in any ways to which they explicitly do not consent: especially for AI training data, for advertising we don’t run ourselves, or for others tracking you. That’s our firm commitment to you, the people who contribute to our work.
We welcome your feedback on our commitments here.