Independent site (2008–2015) The blog was created in 2008 by
Annalee Newitz under
Gawker Media. Newitz had been approached by Gawker shortly after another of Newitz's projects,
other magazine, ceased print publication—and was asked to start a science and science-fiction blog. Staff at founding included
Charlie Jane Anders, Geoff Manaugh (
BLDGBLOG), Graeme McMillan (
Newsarama), Kevin Kelly (Joystiq, Cinematical) and feminist retro-futuristic writer Lynn Peril (author of
Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons). After seven years as head editor, in January 2014, Newitz became the new editor at
Gizmodo, while co-founder Anders remained as editor at
io9—as part of a plan by Gawker to integrate
io9 with
Gizmodo.
io9's 11-member staff joined
Gizmodo's 22 person staff, under Newitz's overall supervision. One of the reasons for the merger was to better coordinate content:
io9 is a science and science fiction blog, while
Gizmodo is a technology blog, which resulted in what Gawker assessed as roughly a 12% rate of overlapping content. After a nearly eight-year run, Newitz retired from both
io9 and Gizmodo on November 30, 2015, explaining that they had grown to disliking managing both sites at once and having taken them away from their passion of writing articles. Newitz moved to take a position as tech culture editor at
Ars Technica. Anders remained as head editor of
io9. Besides Newitz, several other longtime core staff members left their positions at
io9 during this transitional period.
Sub-blog of Gizmodo (2015–present) On 26 April 2016, Charlie Jane Anders left the site to focus her attention on her then untitled second novel and Rob Bricken took over as editor. On July 31, 2018, Rob Bricken stepped down as editor of
io9, saying that managing the site was taking up too much time and he would rather spend writing articles for it. His place as editor was filled by Jill Pantozzi, former editor-in-chief of
The Mary Sue, who had originally joined
io9 as a managing editor and took up the deputy editor position after Bricken's departure. Following the departure of Pantozzi, who left the site entirely in December 2021, James Whitbrook, who had been an
io9 staff writer since 2014, was made the new Deputy Editor in charge of
io9. In 2023 io9 was amongst sites owned by G/O Media that published AI written articles to significant backlash. There was internal dissent to this decision, with James Whitbrook publishing a statement denouncing the decision to publish such material. == List of editors ==