I had recently asked to step down as CEO of Gizmodo Media Group and with Univision’s

reluctant blessing, will be officially leaving later this month.

With recent changes consolidating all business unit reporting lines of Fusion Media Group into
Univision, my decision makes structural sense for GMG. Editorial Director Susie Banikarim will
now have direct oversight of all GMG newsroom staff and related journalism-budgets, and work
with Sameer Deen, recently named as the new head of Univision Digital, to manage GMG, The
Onion and Univision.com. I have gotten to know Sameer in my time at Univision, and his
previous experience in new media from NBC and Scripps Networks sets him up well to
understand what uniquely contemporary digital newsrooms, such as GMG, need in order to be
successful in the long-term. As Sameer has underscored, Univision is now taking a close look at
its entire portfolio and I am really glad Susie has recently begun working directly on all GMG
newsroom matters with him, as well as other Univision Digital business colleagues, and outside
consultants.

I said in my very first all-hands that I think leading and managing this special group of journalists
is a privilege and something I will never take for granted. I want to thank all of you for allowing
me the opportunity to be a part of what is an incredible--and ongoing--journalistic journey at
GMG.

Along the way, there have been well chronicled integration challenges, around some new
systems and processes, and key support services. And, sometimes, these have been quite the
distraction from what most of us are here to do, every day. At the same time, being part of
Fusion Media Group at Univision also gave us new resources and, therefore, a greater ability to
pursue exactly the kind of journalism that all of you are inherently so very good at, every day.
Much of the credit for this goes to Isaac Lee and Felipe Holguin, and key members of our
extended Univision family, all the way to the Board, including its Chairman Haim Saban. I am
quite appreciative of Univision management’s hands-off support throughout my time here.

I spent the past 19 months focused obsessively on making sure GMG journalism is adequately
staffed, with the right, diverse talent and, more critically, well-resourced, so you can all execute
your most ambitious work. I hope most of you feel that all of our newsrooms are healthier today,
than when we started this journey together. And, along the way, you have had the freedom--and
the resources--to always pursue the kind of journalism you came here to do. I came in as a big
believer in Church and State practices, and I leave knowing that approach has worked well at
GMG, for both our readers and advertisers, every single day.

I am so very proud of what you have all collectively accomplished with these newsroom
resources, for our still-growing audiences. All of you who believed and have stayed through the
acquisition-related changes and the transition, and the many talented colleagues who have
joined GMG in the past two years, continue to confound the numerous critics, doubters and
skeptics out there, with very measurable outcomes. And it shows.
Across the FMG network of sites, we now reach at least 116 million unique visitors every month,
as measured by ComScore. Amid everything else, we added two new sites and four new
sub-sites to the family, migrated six sites on to our continuously improving Kinja platform, while
proving our journalism can transcend platforms, with the successful Season 1 of Jalopnik’s Car
vs America, and creation of a slew of engaging podcasts.

In 2017 alone, within our digital portfolio, we saw six billion page-views and 2.5 billion
video-views. Just within GMG sites, Gizmodo, Jalopnik, The Root, Lifehacker, and Gizmodo
Español, hit all-time audience records. I am particularly thrilled with the powerful resurgence of
The Root, which has tripled its monthly audience since it became part of the GMG family.

Others out there may claim bigger numbers or a more meteoric rise in audiences in 2017, but
we achieved what we did the hard way, with 99% of our total page-views still coming from
organic reach and not via paid efforts, thanks to that rare and unique combination of
longevity+relevance.

Along the way, you really mixed it up. At Splinter, we published the most one-word stories: 9
(Clearly, quite unlike the length of this goodbye note!) Lifehacker published 897 how-to posts in
2017, and just our DC Comics/Marvel stories alone generated 72 million page-views. We began
with zero podcasts and ended 2017 with 6.1 million downloads of 258 episodes. And, you are
now in the enviable position of having a sizeable video team, with a 100% sell-through on the
video we currently create, and still not enough homegrown video to meet the growing
appetite—from readers and advertisers alike.
https://fmgdata.kinja.com/editorial-wins-by-the-numbers-1822931415

During this time, we didn’t pivot, and we didn’t mortgage our unique and enviable business
model, with its multiple revenue streams, especially e-commerce, to third-party social media
platforms. And when many newsrooms are abandoning reader-comments as a burden, we got
11 million comments in 2017 alone, reinforcing GMG as home to engaging conversations, and
not just one-way storytelling. The upshot of all of your efforts: we had +3 minutes of engaged
time per user, on a monthly basis, across 88,000 published posts in 2017, an engagement level
with young US audiences that our peers are still hard-pressed to match. This is credit to your
journalism as well as to our Kinja platform, which has the great potential to offer us, and
hopefully other media companies, a continued, much-needed moat against these troubling
third-party platforms.

I am particularly proud of the ongoing transformation of our GMG newsroom staff, in terms of
gender and on other diversity yardsticks. At the beginning of 2016, nearly 80% of our team was
white and 62% male. Today, most of our peers, including most deeper-pocketed newsrooms,
don’t come close to where we already are, in our paid interns, full-time hiring and overall
retention, as well as the diversity in our leadership ranks. This deliberate diversity is a key
reason why GMG’s #MeToo experience in past year has only been in writing about it at most of
our peers. There will always be some ways to go on the diversity front, so please continue to
transparent about staff and hiring practices at GMG, because we need to lead and not follow or
fall behind, for the sake of our industry.
https://fmg.kinja.com/gizmodo-media-group-staff-profile-fall-2017-1819857777

Now, at the risk for forgetting many others, I want to single out some people.

Lynn Oberlander, my very first hire at GMG, is a key reason our contemporary, daily acts of
journalism haven't faced new existential threats. I have benefited a lot from her always-wise and
opinionated counsel on many matters, well beyond lawsuits. Always listen to her.

Alex Dickinson, Ryan Brown, Jim Cooke, Adam Neuman, Ernie Deeb, Kavi Reddy, Andrew
Harding, Emmy de la Cruz, Panama Jackson, Kashmir Hill, Alaa Basatneh, Stephen Totillo,
Victor Jeffreys, Jennie Meltzer, Emma Baccellieri, Camila Jimenez Villa, Etele Illés, Ryan
Mandelbaum, Mark Kortekaas, Maritza DeLeon, Melissa Kirsch, Patrick George, Shehroz Ali,
Ally Tubis, Will Sansom, Danielle Belton, Sarah Dedewo, Ana Garcia, Damon Young, Megan
Greenwell, Jane Hegeler, David McKenna, Kelly Bourdet, Gregory Jette, Rachel Gross, Don
Steele, Michael Harriot, Anna Merlan, Lisette Simon, Carolina Rodriguez, Borja Echevarria,
Christina Blacken, Patricia Hernandez, Julia Saenz, Eyal Ebel, Joanna Rothkopf, Jose Zamora,
Carmelo Perez, Katie McDonough, Taryn Weiss, Michele Chiang, Jessica Herrera-Flanigan,
Prachi Gupta, Kate Conger, Jim Boos, Diana Moskovitz, Hamilton Nolan, Matthew Shire, Nadya
Ramson, Nona Willis Aronowitz, Michelle Woo, Brooke Minters, Tim Marchman, Ryan Felton,
Jay Grant, Rosemary Mercedes, Joyce Tang, Monique Judge, Keith Summa, Koa Beck, Pepo
Ferradas, Boris Gartner, Ecleen Caraballo, Nick Humphries, Kirsten West Savali, Beth
Skwarecki, Molly Osberg, Margaret Lazo and Jonathan Schwartz, all gave me many different
reasons why my time at GMG/FMG and Univision will be memorable.

I used to tell myself that I simultaneously raise the average age and drop the average IQ, every
time I walked into a meeting at GMG. And it pleased me no end, that I got to work with so many
smart and deeply committed colleagues, such as all of you. While I will not miss my freezing
office—and perhaps you will get back a much-needed, extra conference room back--I will miss
that smart learning curve I experienced here, the most.

I don’t yet have a next adventure lined up, a welcome, new experience for me in three, non-stop
decades in journalism and the business of journalism. But, no matter where I might eventually
end up, I will be a fan of GMG’s storytelling, via Twitter and in real life, as well as a well-wisher.

“A leader is best
When people barely know that he exists,
Not so good when people obey and
Acclaim him,
Worst when they despise him.
“Fail to honor people
They fail to honor you;”
But of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done,
his aim fulfilled,
They will all say,
“We did this ourselves.”’
--Lao-tzu 600 B.C. (est)

The work at GMG is far from ever done or our aims yet fulfilled. But you did do this, by
yourselves, collectively. Hold on to that resilience.

If you can, amid all the relentless change that is now the new normal for our business, remain
focused on our growing audiences, and keep creating meaningful differences than better
sameness, with all your journalism, every day.

And, try to remember that it is a lot harder to be kind than clever.

Thank you
Raju