Emma Carmichael, the editor in chief of Jezebel, announced on Friday that she’s stepping down from that position next month.
“This has been the hardest decision of my professional life, but it’s one I feel clear-headed about — I’m simply a little burnt out and ready to take a break from running a website,” she wrote in a memo to her staff. “I’m so proud of the work that we’ve done together in my three years here.”
Carmichael, who took over for Jessica Coen in 2014, will be consulting editor of Jezebel through the end of September, she wrote.
In her note, she praised all of Jezebel’s journalism, “from the dumbest Slack tangent” to “carefully reported scoops and thoughtful essays.”
“Thanks for providing our readers with a fun, inclusive space to be silly and smart in the same hour. Thanks for somehow generating a week’s worth of Titanic coverage because we thought it might be a funny thing to do. Thanks for writing about sports for a day.”
Carmichael becomes the third woman in a leadership position to leave Gizmodo Media Group in as many months. In April, Gizmodo Media Group managing editor Katie Drummond left to become managing editor of The Outline. In May, Gizmodo Media Group President Heather Dietrick left to become president and publisher of The Daily Beast.
But the company has also made increasing gender diversity a priority. It recently announced the promotion of Lynn Oberlander to executive vice president and Lauren Bertolini to chief operating officer. In May, the company released a diversity report that showed editorial leadership is 55 percent female.
