Joystiq's top three staffers, editor-in-chief Chris Grant, managing editor Justin McElroy, and reviews editor Griffin McElroy, announced today that they'll be leaving the AOL-owned blog at the end of the year.
According to Engadget editor Darren Murph, who first broke the news, Grant will be leaving to start a new site under Vox Media, which currently runs the up-and-coming tech blog The Verge. Given the timing of all three departures, the likely conclusion is that the McElroy brothers will be making the same jump.
The Verge was founded earlier this year by a pair of former Engadet editors, Josh Topolsky and Nilay Patel, who had resigned over frustration with the way AOL was managing its media division. While it would be easy to speculate that the Joystiq team left for similar reasons, a post on Griffin McElroy's Tumblr offers assurance that the circumstances of his departure are altogether different.
"I am not leaving Joystiq because AOL did something wrong, or because AOL is a crummy employer," he writes. "There are things I can say and things I can’t say, though I’m sure simple context clues will divine more information from the latter than from the former."
Judging by the various accounts floating about, this seems to be less about anything AOL has done and more about the opportunity to help build something new with their close friends and former colleagues.
On a personal note, I'd like to wish all three of them the best in their future endeavors. I had the pleasure of meeting Justin and Griffin at this year's PAX, and I can assure you they're just as roguishly handsome and talented in person. Whatever they've got in store for us, it'll be worth reading.