And another branch of the Gizmodo Media Group has gotten the axe:
Apparently there won’t even be a farewell post on the site; the news is being spread via comments (where I heard it) and Twitter.
This is not a good sign.
Several of the other Gizmodo divisions have their own news forks, like Jezebel and the Root, and GMG has announced that they will reassign staff to other departments “where possible.” But several employees have already announced they’ve been let go and are looking for work.
The journalism may not have always been excellent, but their snarky and sometimes silly tone made keeping up with bad news a little easier.
My wife writes for them, among many others. Recently she’s had her assignments there cut back by 50%. They have been planning changes for some time, which they claim are related to the new anti-gig-economy law (AB #5) in CA. Which makes no sense; we live in Belgium so are far beyond the reach of CA employment law.
Woof, not again. Spanfeller murdered the Special Projects Desk (because they were exposing corrupt companies who also happened to be advertising), crippled Deadspin, shafted The Onion, bludgeoned Gizmodo - literally has spent his entire time destroying every individual identity and everything that made GMG different from the bland Polyhons or PCmags of the world.
Wonkette, one of the Gawker properties long ago sold off (by Nick Denton) now employs as many people as Jezebel.
We live in an era where vulture capital orcs and vast media conglomerates are constantly buying, stripping, selling, and launching new (and highly profitable ventures) and screwing workers out of pay and seniority with a constant shell game.
You missed one difference: If you’re strobe-sensitive, and use certain anti-strobing fixes in your browser, Gizmodo Media Groups starts strobing. Most other sites don’t do that.
GMG was so much better under Denton’s ownership as far as not inducing epilipsy and breaking browsers every damn week. (Though Denton oversaw four changes to layout and systems, including the time he built one without the greys and without a way to block assholes. Hm. Strangely familiar.)
The whole practice needs to be regulated with an iron fist.
The first time I heard of this sort of thing was in the mid-80’s, when the Haft family tried to buy Safeway in a hostile bid. The result was that some or all of the Safeways in the city we were living closed.
io9 has not been allocated staff or resources since 2017, was on the chop block according to scuttlebutt. The Onion, and AV Club have had a number of contributors dismissed by GHP.
