"I'm Heading Out to the Black. Farewell, io9 and Gizmodo!"

December 1, 2015 4:15 AM

Annalee Newitz (prev) is jumping ship for Ars Technica.
posted by valkane (38 comments total)

I look forwards to good things.

Io9 is kind of sort of mostly dead, which makes me sad - Charlie Jane Anders is still doing stuff for Gizmodo and there's an io9 site still that carries crossposts from there, but really it's a zombie site now.
posted by Artw at 4:18 AM on December 1, 2015

(There's been a lot of changes at Gawker recently but really that is the only one I give a shit about)
posted by Artw at 4:19 AM on December 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

I wouldn't call io9 mostly dead - there's still a fair bit of original content as far as genre media. A bunch of stuff gets crossposted from other Gawker sites, but I think most of the "let's talk about scifi shows" stuff is still originating on io9. And Charlie Jane is writing a bunch of various stuff for io9 specifically.
posted by rmd1023 at 4:40 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I love io9 and Lifehacker, and really wish they weren't part of the Gawker sh*tfest.
Annalee deserves each and every accolade and good wish that comes her way.
I look forward to seeing what she does over at Ars Technica.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 4:55 AM on December 1, 2015 [6 favorites]

I always thought io9 was one of the more popular subsites over there, but who knows what's really behind the change. Nick loves to fiddle with his empire, for sure. Remember when he tried to break the basic blog backwards-means-older posting pattern for some reason? That didn't last long.
posted by mediareport at 4:56 AM on December 1, 2015

Oh, when everything was going to be TV? That was awful.
posted by Artw at 5:01 AM on December 1, 2015

Annalee (and Charlie Jane) did such a great job with io9. They made it crucial reading. It's starting to suffer from the pressure of Gawker Media's constant "change for change's sake" model, so now's a good time as any to move on. I wonder how much longer Charlie Jane is going to stay on.
posted by KingEdRa at 5:13 AM on December 1, 2015 [3 favorites]

I loved io9 for a long time but haven't really read it as much lately. I just clicked on the io9 tag and saw that the post here about the launch of the site was almost eight years ago. How did that happen?
posted by octothorpe at 5:18 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

This is a major loss. I've loved io9 thoroughly, posted the blog to Metafilter when it was launched, and read Ars Technica too. But they're not at all the same.

I can't say precisely how much of io9's editorial voice is due to Newitz, but enough that I'm deeply worried about the future of the site.
posted by anotherpanacea at 6:00 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm beyond tired of Gawker Media and its tendency to create drama for its own sake. It even colors the handful of good posts that I see on its sites; the recent recap of the demise of Grantland, for example, only reminded me of all the times Deadspin took cheap shots at them and Bill Simmons. (And I don't mean legit criticism, although that may have snuck in from time to time, I mean the pure bitchery of a competitor that seems afraid that it can't compete on quality and has to fall back on its real specialty, vindictive gossip.) And most of its contributors can do and have done better work elsewhere; I was honestly surprised, no joke, to find out that Charlie Jane Anders was a respected SF writer and not just a listicle generator. I wish Newitz the best of luck in her new gig.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:29 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

posted the blog to Metafilter when it was launched
...
Actually it's sad to me that this crew of talented, unique folks produced a blog that reads like a clone of every other Gawker propert

Hahaha oh snark, never change. (Love you grobster but you got that one pretty wrong).

Boo on this. Io9 was one of the few science fiction places on the web that isn't majority advertorial fawning over movie properties. There was some good thoughtful writing there. Of course, that's probably why it's being flooded with Gizmo swamp-water--good writing is costly, and that makes numbers sad.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:30 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Well, currently on the front page, there's a bit on the Doctor Who Christmas special, and below that is this, a recurring feature. In fairness, below that is a notice about a symposium on James Tiptree, Jr. at the University of Oregon, with Ursula K. le Guin and David Gerrold as special guests, so it's not a total loss. Still, though.
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:38 AM on December 1, 2015

I'm selfishly sad that Annalee won't be involved with io9 and Gizmodo any more, but as a big fan of her writing, I'm excited that she'll be writing more. If you like pop science books and haven't read her book, "Scatter, Adapt, and Remember: How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction", it's worth checking out.
posted by sgranade at 6:55 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]

There definitely has been a drop in original articles and a boost in cross-pollination, but I think that's true for both Gizmodo and io9, and maybe, more so for the former. io9 is one of the first websites I read in the morning and I hope it or whatever comes of it will continue to follow the same path. One thing I will credit Newitz with is acknowledging an error. She had published an article that kind of slammed Latino-Review for reporting X. The article presented Latino-Review's coverage of X as hard and confirmed news, but as a fan of that particular Latino-Review writer (Da7e Gonzales), I knew he had couched his news very much as speculation and not yet 100% verified. I directly linked to the article in a comment and called her out on her depiction of that article, and did go back and soften her writing to reflect it.
posted by Atreides at 7:15 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

I have come to terms with the fact that no matter what I do I will never be as awesome as Annalee Newitz, but that's okay.
posted by Pope Guilty at 7:21 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Ars is expanding quite aggressively at the moment - a UK edition launched this year, is still recruiting (it just appointed its News Ed from the Reg) and splashing the cash. I'm sure that Newitz' move marks a wish by Ars to do more Omni-style speculative stuff, and there's no lack of fandom in the editorial ranks, so I'm expecting some good stuff along the line.
posted by Devonian at 8:27 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Ars front page is sure a cluttered mess. I'll give this to Denton, his sites have a somewhat clean look to them.

io9 won't be the same without Annalee and it's not even the same now. Still, we will always have the epic takedown of the the rank stupidity that was Star Trek: Into Darkness.
posted by Ber at 11:13 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]

Here's a great interview with Newitz by Benjamen Walker:

http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/51029
posted by slappy_pinchbottom at 11:19 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

Man, that STID recap. I've been mostly encouraged by what I've seen of the upcoming Star Wars movie, and just about every geek I know already has their tickets, and one of the things I've been asking myself is why I'm not more jazzed about it... and that recap reminded me.
posted by Halloween Jack at 11:29 AM on December 1, 2015

In other news, Whitson Gordon is leaving Lifehacker as Editor in Chief; he's gone as of the end of December.
posted by Major Matt Mason Dixon at 12:13 PM on December 1, 2015

I hope the io9 material remains accessible, so much great stuff. Particularly by Newitz or Anders.
posted by Coaticass at 12:53 PM on December 1, 2015

Also that Star Trek: Into Darkness critique is indeed a thing of beauty.
posted by Coaticass at 12:55 PM on December 1, 2015

I've been a fan of Annalee Newitz's insightful and creative writing since she wrote columns in our community Metro newspaper on 1999. I'm also a frequently reader of Ars Technica, so I'm looking forward to this move.
posted by eye of newt at 1:10 PM on December 1, 2015

I've also noticed a slightly drop in original content on io9, although a brief review of the 20 articles on their front page right now shows that the large majority are still, in fact, original. What's changed is the amount of cross-pollination from other Gawker sites - maybe a full third are from other sites, which isn't bad in and of itself, but tends to dilute the focus of the site so it's more of a pop culture/tech site with SF/fantasy inflections.

Are there other blogs similar to io9 out there that cover SF/fantasy/science/tech? I don't really need to know the goings-on in every Marvel and DC comic, I'd be happy with less articles but more original stuff.
posted by adrianhon at 2:25 PM on December 1, 2015

Ars front page is sure a cluttered mess.

There's a switch in the nav bar that switches you to a more streamlined blog style, which helps, and sets a cookie, but: yeah.

I only started reading io9 a couple of years back, along with Gizmodo, because I wasn't really feeling my learned-behaviour knee-jerk anti-gawker conviction, and I'm glad I did.

The recent massive cross-posting thing between the sites (mixed with a lot of Kotaku and some Jalopnik, mostly) has really exploded since the most recent (and very effective) redesign, and I think it's been pushed a little too hard. I'm sure it works to some extent to drive traffic across their network sites, but it really tends to dilute the uniqueness of each property and encourage surface-only engagement. But I suspect the data shows it to be a net positive, which is why they've doubled down on it.

Ah well, io9's loss is Ars Technica's gain. I read both daily, so.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:44 PM on December 1, 2015

I don't know the backstory of how Denton managed to hire such fabulous writer/editors as Newitz and Anders, but any time people have ragged on Gawker I've had to nod but with my fingers crossed behind my back for io9.

Regarding CJA's "listicles," one of the things I've found most interesting about her writing is how seamless the boundaries seem to be between her serious writing and those lists. The lists are essentially mini-essays on the history of SF and fantasy, ruminations that feel equally inspired by and inspiring her serious writing; I've never encountered anyone anywhere who has generated so many 10-examples-of lists that I've actually been moved to click on in explicit despite of my aversion to such things. I'll actually be a bit sorry if her serious career takes off sufficiently that she doesn't need to bother with the blog trivia.

But regarding the cross-pollinations, the only objection I've ever had to Newitz was after her brief takeover at Gizmodo, they began cross-posting "cool" gifs and pics by Casey Chan from Sploid, almost all of which were glorious images of war weapons -- missiles, tanks, machine-guns, bombs, not just highlighted in sunsets or whatever, but actively shooting and blowing up things, sometimes in real theaters. I think this was put on brief hiatus after he posted a "beautiful" gif of a B52 dropping real bombs on a real (but of course invisible) target, but he quickly returned. He's clearly got something warped in his relentless love of only murder devices, but that's fine if Sploid readers want to consume that; I just objected to such malevolence suddenly injected into Gizmodo on a daily basis. I hope that disappears with the reorganization, though I don't have much hope.

But in any case, I don't know whether that's Newitz's fault (and seems presumably inconsistent with her politics, but who knows). In any case, she was wonderful at io9, and I eagerly read it daily for almost all of the 9 years it existed. I'll be sad to see it dissolve into Gizmodo. Hopefully she can create a new empire at Ars and maybe steal CJA away.
posted by chortly at 3:09 PM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]

What a bummer for reading io9, but good for Annalee, because I suspect everyone's going to be bailing from this ship. I'd predict Charlie Jane's out within a couple of months as well.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:27 PM on December 1, 2015

Aw, that's a real pity. I'm very fond of IO9 and it's sad to see it wither away.
posted by tavella at 9:19 PM on December 1, 2015

I have come to terms with the fact that no matter what I do I will be as awesome as Annalee Newitz*, but no one will know.

And I am not happy the free blog I read daily is getting linked to Gizmodo, but I guess it's better than the fate of Jezebel (which is getting more "celeb" news).

(*Except the Science. I suck at that.)
posted by Mezentian at 3:25 AM on December 2, 2015

The publication rate for Gawker properties is basically unsustainable, so io9 being "mostly dead" (if it were true) would not necessarily be a bad thing. Decrease in quantity would likey correlate with increased average quality, at least in this case. I may not care much for CJA's stories, but her io9 curation is usually thought provoking.
posted by lodurr at 11:59 AM on December 2, 2015

Death notice for io9.
posted by Artw at 9:13 AM on December 15, 2015 [1 favorite]

Well, shit.
posted by octothorpe at 9:25 AM on December 15, 2015

I like the traditional "good news, readers!" tone and their assessment of io9 that it was good for some nerd film and TV news.
posted by Artw at 9:32 AM on December 15, 2015

My favorite blogs all seem to either die or turn into clickbate garbage.
posted by octothorpe at 9:44 AM on December 15, 2015

2015 has been a pretty rough year for high quality pop culture blogs.
posted by Artw at 10:00 AM on December 15, 2015

Bah. Hopefully gawker becomes more like io9 than io9 becomes like gawker.
posted by rmd1023 at 11:52 AM on December 15, 2015

Io9 has not been very like io9 of late.
posted by Artw at 12:03 PM on December 15, 2015

io9.com now redirects to io9.gizmodo.com. It's actually pretty hard to tell the difference without looking at the URL, given how much cross-posting there already had been.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:01 PM on December 21, 2015