44 Employees Leave Gizmodo Media to Avoid Layoffs Following Budget Cuts

44 employees have accepted a buyout from Gizmodo Media, formerly known as Gawker Media, to avoid layoffs following budget cuts at the company.

Gizmodo Media, which owns Gizmodo, Kotaku, Deadspin, The Root, Jezebel, Lifehacker, io9, Splinter, Jalopnik, and Earther, was founded following the bankruptcy of Gawker Media.

According to the Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani, Gizmodo Media “has accepted buyout requests from 44 staffers across the various sites over the past several weeks,” who will receive “18 weeks of pay and healthcare coverage.”

“While some staff from almost every site took buyouts, according to several sources familiar, a more significant portion of the company’s video staff, as well employees of the post-Gawker news website Splinter, are set to leave the company,” Tani reported, adding that the buyouts “likely helped GMG avoid a messier budget cut down the line, and were the final result of months of negotiations between Univision, GMG, and the representatives of the media group’s editorial union.”

In an internal memo, Gawker Media Editorial Director Susie Banikarim claimed the buyouts were “significant enough for us to avoid any newsroom layoffs,” while one Gizmodo Media employee told the Daily Beast that employees feel “deep exhaustion.”

“The feeling is deep exhaustion overall cause of how long this dragged out,” the employee declared. “People wanna get back to work and not have this cloud still over their heads.”

Former Gawker employee William Turton responded to the news by posting on Twitter, “congrats to univision for buying an already profitable company and fucking it up so bad 44 people took buyouts.”

https://twitter.com/WilliamTurton/status/1012410115327234048

Huffington Post senior reporter Ashley Feinberg described the buyout as “depressing.”

good for them and also man this shit is depressing https://t.co/TH70NyeUxU

— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) June 28, 2018