Jon Ponder is a writer, online creator and producer, and researcher. Ponder is an experienced podcast producer. His most recent project is “Variety Confidential,” a series produced by Variety, the entertainment industry trade magazine. The series, presents stories of crimes and scandals from the Variety archives which go back to the magazine’s founding in 1905 as the trade journal of the vaudeville circuit. He was a creator of Wondery’s “Hollywood & Crime” podcast series, for which he was lead researcher as well as a writer, director and producer of its first season, “The Black Dahlia Serial Killers.” In February 2020, he was a presenter at the Podcast Movement’s Evolutions conference at the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles.He has been a researcher for Seymour Consulting Group, whose clients include 9200 Sunset, Avison Young, Mani Brothers Real Estate Group and other companies. He is currently researching a proposed permanent exhibit at a Sunset Strip building for the Seymour Group. For a Netflix marketing project, he provided historical research and commentary about the Constance Bennett Building on the Sunset Strip.He is the editor of the website, West Hollywood HIstory, where he writes about the people, places and events that have make West Hollywood's story unique. He also contributed articles on Hollywood history to WEHOville.com.Ponder has had 30-plus year career in editorial, advertising, marketing and promotion. Early clients included Columbia Pictures and United Artists, in Hollywood; John Wiley & Sons publishers, in New York; and the Pharmaceutical Institute, in the Research Triangle, N.C. Since the mid-1990s, he has produced websites for local, regional, national and international clients. Currently he produces sites for NewmanPR in Miami, whose clients include Holland America Lines and the Florida Keys travel board.Beginning in 2010, he edited Gore Vidal’s official website and, in the early ‘90s, worked as a researcher on Hugh Hefner’s never-finished autobiography.He is a member of the board of directors for the West Hollywood History Center, vice president of the West Hollywood Historic Preservation Alliance and a co-founder of the Alla Nazimova Society.