BREAKING: Gideon Yago Leaving MTV

Brian Raftery | January 26, 2007 3:59 am
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We’ve just learned that MTV News emo-journo Gideon Yago is leaving the network, presumably to work on his movie career (Yago sold a screenplay last fall to Focus Features about the Iraq war). Yago just sent us his farewell email, which you can read after the click-through.

Hello –

As some of you may have heard, today marks my last day as a full-time member of MTV News. I hope to work with you all again in the future but for now my days as a permanent daily fixture on 29, in the studio, or the edit come to an end. I feel incredibly lucky to have spent these last seven years at MTV. I have done so much, seen so many things, worked with such outstanding people that I can say without an ounce of hestitaion that it has been the single coolest experience of my entire life. I wanted to thank you all for all of it.

In the short term, I am headed to Los Angeles to try my hand at other creative ventures. I’m am easily reachable, not just through the homing chip Erica Laden planted in my neck, but at [redacted] My cell phone is also … thankfully … still active.

I did want to offer one final valediction, though. I have learned a great many things during my tenure here: how to write for television, how to do a stand up, how to interview, when to pick your battles. There is one lesson, however, that I consider far more valuable than all the others combined: our audience deserves integrity and respect. Growing up in America is a difficult, sometimes traumatic, often alienating, very strange proposition. In between trying to figure out who they are and what matters in life, there is a chorus of parents, teachers, people and pitchmen telling them what to think and what to do. We are lucky to have an audience that treats us as peers. Though it might be seductive to play the short game with their trust in return for stacked favors and immediate gains, please keep fighting for them and thinking of them in the fine work that you all do. They deserve as much.

Thank you for letting me be part of your lives and your work.

Very Best,

Gideon