[1] He is also a past Chairman of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and longtime executive board member of Digital Content Next (DCN). When Jim Spanfeller and a private equity firm called Great Hill Partners took over G/O Mediaformerly Gizmodo Media Groupin April, their stated goal was to make the company profitable. But Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. When asked if it was inaccurate, then, to say she had accepted the job, Spanfeller did not respond. I hold myself to a high regard and ensuring that Im respectful to others and create a community of camaraderie, hire for diversity, and that there is a work life balance, she told Deadspin. Its everything Ive wanted and more.. Asked about the former employees accounts, Spanfeller said he has no idea what this refers to and it is not my recollection of working at The Daily Meal, adding that he doesnt recall screaming at anyone. Announcing Persauds hire on July 10, Spanfeller wrote this of the process: After a very fulsome search where we interviewed dozens of qualified candidates we identified two finalists. Legal review is often a lengthy process involving multiple reads, so talking to a lawyer is certainly not an indication that we would publish without completing the reporting process. Another was more direct: Thats Jim wanting to be in control. In one case, sources say Spanfeller did offer to promote a woman to run human resources, but on the condition she fire another woman at the company as her first order of business. I intend to continue supervising the reporting process, including legal review, and then publish a thorough and fair story, which of course would include responses from people we spoke to. Whenever a publication shuts down, as has happened more and more over the last few years, it undergoes a public eulogizing by its employees, the friends of its employees, the people who wanted to work there, and most importantly the readers, whose tributes are . In this specific case, I have committed to the current story being fully reported and submitted for external review and, if it passes that review, it will be published. Club, and Splinter, was purchased by the firm in April, along with the satirical news site The Onion, which led to a massive shift in the companys culture and considerable turnover in the top ranks or, as one G/O Media employee put it, Spanfeller has brought in a bunch of white dudes to change the company. That distinction quickly sparked backlash in late 2019, when the staff of Deadspin resigned over the firing of a top editor and the company's mandate that the site stick to covering sports. While G/O Media has often placed importance on diversity among their staff and in their coverage, these executive-level jobs went to white males. [5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. The sales employee (who is not an SVP) wasnt surprised to hear that Spanfeller didnt know what she did. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. 3. (Spanfeller denies this claim.). The CEO alleged. Deadspin's entire editorial staff is gone - The Washington Post Before we go any further, I feel compelled to acknowledge that nearly everything about this item is a conflict of interest. According to Great Hill Partners' website, Spanfeller "has led comparable media platforms and positioned them for successful strategic exit," which probably means something to someone, somewhere,. As the former publisher of National Geographic, Mens Health & Maximmy successful presentation & leadership skills are evident.. Deadspin Editor Quits, Rails Against Bosses: 'I've Been Repeatedly Lied I told Mike, verbally and in writing, that I would be interested in taking on new responsibilities and opportunities within the organization and I would like to interview for whatever position would be a part of that, she told Deadspin. Deadspin Is ZombifiedBut Gawker's Content Warriors Fight On It will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, he told Insider, and hunt for acquisitions in 2022. UPDATE: This article has been updated to remove an incorrect reference to former G/O Media Lynn Oberlander leaving her job shortly after the companys latest round of layoffs. It's a culture of fear," said the first former employee, who added that staffers sometimes likened meetings with Spanfeller to the "boar on the floor" scene in HBO's "Succession," where media mogul Logan Roy orders his underlings to crawl and oink like pigs. [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! A week after Spanfeller insisted to Varietythat he did not plan to cut our way to growth, the CEO fired 25 employees, including in top positions, such as axing former Gizmodo Media Group editorial director Susie Banikarim. Multiple sources say that Spanfeller reached out to VP of media operations Brad Klancnik to tell him he was a valuable employee and that the new owners would like him to stay at the company, but female VPs say he did not relay such messages to them. The Onion Union, which represents AV Club staffers, told Insider in a statement that it hoped "this period of prosperity creates tangible benefits for all of our members especially those whose jobs are being moved to Los Angeles, one of the most expensive cities in the world.". Have a tip or story idea? Or to keep it anonymous, click here. Katie then refused to assume the HR lead role around other wider layoffs at the company. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. A longtime digital media veteran, Spanfeller was an unconventional choice to lead the new Gizmodo Media Group sites (The Daily Beast's CEO, Heather Dietrick, once served as president of the . Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. These men, and others who now hold C-suite positions at the company, were each hired without a public recruitment process, and several were installed over high-ranking women who had been successfully performing those jobs at the company for years. In a follow-up meeting with Spanfeller about the story, she suggested that hard financial data might not be their audiences central interest. When Rogers was hired less than a week after McAvoy told the SVP that she would be able to interview for the job, she said, she realized that he must have been chosen well before. G/O Media, the company which ran Deadspin, was acquired by the private equity group Great Hill Partners, which installed Spanfeller as CEO and gave him one mission: Make them richer. Endnotes [1] Statement from G/O Media: "Some reports have miscast Jim Spanfeller as a private equity businessman when, in fact, he has spent his entire career in editorial-driven businesses. Jack Crosbie, a former Splinter contractor and co-owner of Discourse, said that traffic declined at Splinter because G/O did not refill lost positions. Former Daily News Editor in Chief Is Tapped to Run Deadspin Club managing editor Caitlin PenzeyMoog, who both resigned on July 12. My territory has been cut in half. 12-Year-Old Prankster Throws Dead Snake on Woman's Car and Gets Flattened by Husband 15,743. Among the multiple Gawker and/or GMG and/or G/O websites I wrote for was, for a brief stint, Deadspin, which is currently without a staff after every single one of its writers quit en masse following the firing of beloved editor Barry Petchesky, who is another friend of mine. In addition to clichs like we are ambitious and be passionate and have fun, the fifth value on the list said, We will be at our best when we embrace many different perspectives and experiences. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. Gizmodo and The Onion's New Owner Lays Off 25, Including - TheWrap We had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. He sent a message back about the importance of diversity and inclusion and a full hiring process. Multiple sources say Pontius declined to go along with the plan, angering Spanfeller. He said the company was just profitable before the pandemic hit its business, and is now comfortably back in the black. But Spanfeller said that he wants G/O Media to keep the voice and mission that made Gawker Media sites singular in the digital media industry. Amid the chaos, someone edited Spanfeller's Wikipedia entry to read, "Jim Spanfeller is a fart-faced fascist best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009." (That language has since . When I followed up about the meeting the next day with Spanfeller, I was told it was canceled. On July 30, the day after I emailed reporting questions to Spanfeller, Maidment, Rogers, Jesse Knight, and Sean Flanagan, Spanfeller sent a company-wide email under the subject line Reporting on Ourselves; Deadspin Reporting On The Company and Our Executives. In the email, excerpts of which were published by media reporters from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, Spanfeller voiced his opinion on how coverage of the company should work: I believe the solution is to have that reporting reviewed by an impartial outside editor a Public Editor, if you will [] and not just for these situations but for any situation where someone within or without the company has issues with our coverage or reporting. [1] Spanfeller declined to answer a question about whether he expressed these sentiments to Klancnik. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records (G/O Medias Collective Bargaining Agreement contains a clause that explicitly states that editorial decisions can only be made by editorial staff members, which Spanfeller is not. Deadspin Editor Fired Amid Pushback Over 'Stick to Sports' Memo I was sorry and that is accurate, he said. A source said Spanfeller told editors-in-chief of the companys websites that he had chosen Maidment, 68, for the job before the sale was completed and did not interview other candidates, including Banikarim. Sources say the meeting concluded with an agreement that the best course of action would be to explain to Spanfeller why the player would not be finished by August 15. Spanfeller Hired Media Friends/Former Colleagues to Fill G/O Media Roles Just After Claiming He Had No Plans for Major Turnover. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. New York(CNN Business) Two former executives are suing G/O Media, the parent company of sites including Gizmodo, Deadspin and The Onion, alleging discrimination and negligence. That management did not respond to our request for an explanation is only another of the many ways the workers at GMG have been ignored and put on the back burner in the name of a profitability mirage that is clearly more attractive to the big decision-makers than a functioning workplace. Jim Spanfeller the beleaguered boss of G/O Media, which owns The Onion and Deadspin is being sued by two former executives who claim in separate lawsuits that he discriminated against . Why Ketanji Brown Jackson Split With the Courts Liberals in a 54 Decision, the firing of beloved editor Barry Petchesky, According to Great Hill Partners website, increasingly insisted on directing editorial coverage. It is ridiculous to launch a management survey questioning the editorial value of the site. I have stood up for and advocated for my team since the day I started at G/O. Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise. James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 20012009. You wrote a 'story,'" Spanfeller recalled telling staff. But as Spanfeller began to implement his vision, that hope was replaced by employee frustration and skepticism over his hiring practices and interference with the companys journalism. I hired Katie who accepted the job, he wrote. These conversations reveal that Spanfellers biggest effect on the company since taking over has been a deflation of morale. Computing. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge.. Emma Carmichael is a friend of mine, and we both worked at Gawker Media and, as it was later named after being purchased by Univision, Gizmodo Media Group, or GMG. View details on more than 95 Million registered voters across the United States. Jim Spanfeller - CEO - G/O Media | LinkedIn In late July, more than a month after the womans conversation with Spanfeller (and after the Daily Beast and New York Post published stories about his rocky early days at the company and he became aware of the reporting process for this story about his hiring practices), that same VP was given what management called a promotion, which Spanfeller noted in his responses to Deadspin, saying that she has been promoted to VP Marketing under Bruce Rogers with wider responsibilities., I am at the same level and performing the same duties now as I was before I got this supposed promotion, the VP said. Traffic has fallen across G/O Media's portfolio over the past two years, which Spanfeller pinned on industry-wide struggles to generate audience plus the loss of Deadspin and Splinter. She said Spanfeller told her that he was unaware of what she did at the company, and that she replied: That doesnt help, because that says you not only didnt know what I did, but you also had no interest in meeting the only woman on the revenue leadership team who is an SVP who has been successful, according to meeting her revenue and finance goals. She said the conversation ended with Spanfeller saying, Im sorry, I dont know what else you want me to say., Spanfeller confirmed the womans account to Deadspin. John Taggart for The Washington Post via Getty Images, NOW WATCH: WATCH: How advertisers can navigate the death of third-party cookies, according to execs from Mars Petcare, R/GA, The Washington Post, and The Trade Desk, Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture. One of the former staffers said that as companies sought to double down on diversity and inclusion during the summer of 2020, the branded content team received incoming requests from companies hoping to fund content for The Root, G/O Media's Black news publication. Spanfellers all-staff email went on to accuse Deadspins staff of bias and cast doubt on the motives behind the story. But after the staff meeting, sources say, members of the tech team held a meeting with Knight to explain why the date was unrealistic. "There's been a lot of pain in this, but it's worth it to get properties that are as great as these properties are," Spanfeller said of G/O's 11 publications, which include Gizmodo, Jezebel, The Onion, Lifehacker, The Root, and Kotaku. The fourth known instance of Spanfeller overlooking a woman at the company in favor of a white male former colleague also happened on the sales team. Great Hill Partners and current CEO Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes, bought these sites and the Onion from Univision Communications Inc. in April. Mr. Spanfeller has a BA in English Literature from Union College, Schenectady, New York. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. I first emailed Spanfeller on June 24, early in my reporting process, telling him that I was working on a story about the new hires hed brought to G/O Media in his first few months. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. Spanfeller, a man who is regularly and perhaps euphemistically referred to in press accounts as a digital media veteran, has so far hired a slew of his former colleagues at Forbes.comwhere he was CEO from 2001 to 2009and Playboywhere he was a senior vice president from 1989 to 1993. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com Spanfeller said he did not recall the specific request. (Deadspin reached out to 10 former Spanfeller employees at The Daily Meal; four consented to be interviewed, though all declined to be named because they fear retribution from Spanfeller or their current companies.) 1. "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. Both lawsuits detail discrimination personally faced or witnessed by the plaintiffs from Jim Spanfeller, who became CEO of G/O Media in April after private equity firm Great Hill acquired Gizmodo Media Group. A source at the company familiar with the situation said Thompsons hire had been flagged to upper management as a potential problem. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein said. G/O Media, from a business perspective, has turned a corner, Spanfeller says. Popular Gaming Website Kotaku Might Be Going Away In Wake of (Pontius declined to comment. [6] Just under two years later, Spanfeller was replaced as publisher by Scott Kauffmann and became the national sales manager of Newsweek magazine in 1986. According to his LinkedIn, Thompson is the founder of Mediacentric Inc., a multi-media representation company., A man was hired with my same title [vice president for west coast sales] to be my boss, the VP told Deadspin. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. The Daily Meal was acquired by Tronc in 2016. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin. My management style has been widely reported on over the years and the picture you are painting does not comport with that. ), This isnt the first time Spanfeller has been accused of micromanaging. G/O Media executives have discussed potential deal targets in the past, including Genius, The Hill, and HuffPost, according to two people familiar with the matter. His skin got bright red, she said. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. "We needed to change a lot of things, and change is hard.". The former staff of Splinter later launched the worker-owned Discourse Blog. Three and a half hours later, Maidment sent an email to Greenwell and me with the subject line, Reporting on ourselves. The body of the message read: This is a tradition that makes no sense. Jim Spanfeller has 2 current jobs as Founder at The Daily Meal and Chief Executive Officer at G/O Media. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. The employees, nearly all of whom requested anonymity because of fears of retaliation from company management, are angered by a lack of communication regarding company goals, seeming disregard for promoting diversity within the top ranks of the company, and by repeated and egregious interference with editorial procedures. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. No one has been named interim editor, and there is no succession plan in place. It was four days old. G/O Media lawsuits: Two former exec allege discrimination - CNN McAvoy told her she would be able to interview for a bigger role, she said, only to follow up a few weeks later and say that Rogers had been hired. The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. I thought she was going to be great, and it didnt work out by her own assessment., In response to follow-up questions, Spanfeller clarified that there was never a signed offer between Pontius and the company. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. G/O Media sites generated about 45.7 million unique visitors in October, according to Comscore, down from 47.8 million in October 2020 and 101.6 million in October 2019, right before the Deadspin exodus. All rights reserved. "You're not a 'blogger,' you're a professional journalist. At an all-staff meeting this week, Knight told Spanfeller that August 15 is the target completion date, which Spanfeller told Deadspin he believes is achievable. Multiple people who worked for him at The Daily Meal (part of Spanfeller Media Group) told Deadspin that Spanfeller couldnt cede any control. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. Employees in G/O Media's editorial union urged the company's private-equity owners to replace G/O Chief Executive Jim Spanfeller in a letter Monday, saying a change in leadership was . Who doesnt like uncompromising commentary or sports stories you couldnt find anywhere else? Ultimately, the issue of building a wall has raised political risk, Cramer said. The tech team managed to execute the move in about a month, but before they had finished, Spanfeller changed course and decided that the developers should build an entirely new video platform and player from scratch, explaining the decision by saying that that was what he did at Forbes, according to employees involved. This former staffer said the team wished to add Black creatives to help create more representative branded content to meet the demand, but it was not given additional resources. Six of these hires were Spanfellers colleagues from his previous jobs at Forbes, Playboy, and Ziff Davis. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. The company is also on the hunt for acquisitions, according to Spanfeller. I found this troubling but was okay with it given the circumstances. Like many media companies, G/O Media's advertising business was battered by the pandemic. Answering a similar one, he seemed to contradict himself: This concern was expressed to me and I take it very seriously. McAvoy described the SVP of marketing job as a combination of sales strategy, account management, and managing creative teamsall responsibilities that fell under the SVPs purview. Email us. Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. It wasnt collaborative.. 20 Employees Complained to Deadspin About Spanfellers Management, After interviewing nearly two dozen employees, Deadspin found that 20 people who work for G/O Media expressed frustration with Spanfellers approach to hiring and his new executives lack of knowledge about the company combined with their seeming unwillingness or inability to get up to speed.. Throughout his career he has recieved more than 60 awards for his work from such . These two highly talented HR executives then met with a number of people around our company including representatives of the unions., When asked why Spanfeller didnt follow this thorough search process before filling seven key positions with his former coworkers, he blamed his hiring practices on the financial shape of the company. Im kind of a tipsy at a bar in Paris, she added. Head of The Onion, Deadspin sued for sex discrimination - New York Post G/O Media workers went on strike today in part to protect remote work. (check all that apply). Sign up for notifications from Insider! Voting precincts and districts. The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. According to sources familiar with the situation, the tech team was instructed by Knight, who was directed by Spanfeller, to push out the survey without consent from anyone in editorial. A G/O Media spokesperson said the company plans to grow the 174-person editorial headcount to 200 by the end of the first quarter next year. Find Out With This Weeks News Quiz. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here.
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