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 . LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Jim Spanfeller discover inside connections to recommended . Maidment never responded to my questions directly; the first time I saw his answers was when they were included in Spanfellers company-wide email, but he had this to say about his role in the newsroom: I have always shielded the editorial teams I have managed from commercial or business-side interference in what they write, which to my mind is the essence of editorial integrity. 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. The JW Player was an interim step, Spanfeller said. 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 . When Spanfeller Offered to Promote a Woman to a Top Position, He Insisted She Fire a Female Editorial Director Should She Accept the Job. He would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., 5. And as the only woman on the previous revenue leadership team, I started to wonder if women were being considered for leadership roles. Indeed, Spanfeller told Deadspin that he first contacted Rogers about the job on June 11. Never mind that employees called for his resignation last year. This particular set of troubles all started when private equity firm Great Hill Partners purchased GMG and hired Spanfeller, a former Forbes.com CEO, to guide the ship. The SVP shared her teams revenue goals and their success in meeting those goals, staying focused on numbers and her teams value because she knew her work would be key to profit margins. 12-Year-Old Prankster Throws Dead Snake on Woman's Car and Gets Flattened by Husband 15,743. I never changed my mind. We shall have a discussion on the policy at the next EiCs leads meeting. [12], Spanfeller took over as CEO of G/O Media when Great Hill Partners purchased the company, formerly known as Gizmodo Media Group, and The Onion from Univision on April 8, 2019, and combined the companies. Stay up to date with what you want to know. 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. DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION are core to our culture, and we expect all staff to advance and promote that. Heartened, the SVP emailed Spanfeller to remind him of their meeting in April and express her hope that women, people of color, and people who identify as LGBTQ would be considered as he hired his leadership team, and to say that she looked forward to discussing her role in the organization. In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. Sources say that on the tech side of the company, Spanfeller has taken to micromanaging various aspects of developers work, holding meetings to ask what each one is working on, demanding detailed accounts of how they spend their working days, and mandating various projects based on his work at Forbes in the mid-2000s. 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, but Spanfeller is perhaps best known for dramatically increasing Forbes.coms focus on digital advertising (Spanfeller also previously served as chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau). We sent a request for an explanation and did not receive a response. Senior vice president of marketing Bruce Rogers, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. That is clearly evident when you note the poor syntax and galling bias of the questions. Mr. Spanfeller has a BA in English Literature from Union College, Schenectady, New York. Club managing editor Caitlin PenzeyMoog, who both resigned on July 12. The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. 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. He sent a message back about the importance of diversity and inclusion and a full hiring process. At the time of publication, Carmichaels original tweet has been retweeted more than 300 times. I think it makes him a bad role model for the rest of his team.. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . Spanfellers executive assistant set up a time for us to meet. Im shocked he would call that a good presentation, said the employee who was in the meeting. [2], In 2019, G/O Media's sports blog Deadspin received media attention when all of its writers and editors resigned after an edict given by upper management to "stick to sports". I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. 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. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Top Women at the Company Expressed Interest in Filling Executive Roles and Were Promised Interview Opportunities Prior to Spanfeller Hiring His Friends, Two G/O Media employees Deadspin spoke to, who are women who have an experienced track record with the company, say Spanfeller promised to give them a chance to interview for upper-level roles. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. 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. 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 . Laura M. Browning and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, the A.V. Views. ), The internal reaction to these hires has ranged from confusion to anger. Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. 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. On July 25, a pop-up survey appeared on Deadspin asking three questions: How satisfied are you with Deadspin? This sites credibility is not dependent on who and what it reports on, but on its ability to report forcefully and accurately. I was unclear about what she did. His skin got bright red, she said. But those efforts did not go very far, the people said, and the company has yet to mount a takeover. That evening, the woman received an email from McAvoy telling her that the SVP of marketing job had been filled with someone who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. So Out of Touch: Gen Z Congressman-Elect Mocks RNC Tweet Criticizing Him For His Housing Woes. (Pontius declined to comment. James J. Spanfeller is president of The Spanfeller Group, a management consultancy focusing on digital strategy, audience development, revenue acceleration and talent acquisition. Spanfeller said he asked for the survey; Rogers said he wrote it; and editorial director Paul Maidment said he didnt approve it, but he told Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell that he did not attempt to stop it from running on the site when he was filled in shortly before it was scheduled to go up. Spanfeller did offer to promote one female employee, former chief of staff for The Onion Katie Pontius, and make her the companys head of talent, but the position fell through after he demanded that she fire newsroom editorial director Susie Banikarimas her first management move, which Pontius refused, according to sources who spoke to Deadspin. These actions are clearly management attempting to target, and even intimidate, staff into changing their editorial stance in spite of our contract-protected independence, especially as it comes on the heels of managements repeated attempts to kill this story as it was being reported about the company. [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. He also claimed to have hired four women for major roles though, one of these jobs has not been filled yet, as Spanfeller instead claims he plans to give it to a woman. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. Gaffney and Spanfeller said that G/O Media is looking for acquisitions itself. 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. [9], In 1996, Spanfeller left his job at Inc., where he had become publisher, to become publisher of Yahoo! Never mind the recent exodus of company leadership under his tenure, including the editorial director, chief financial officer, and chief revenue officer. In an emailed statement to Deadspin, Spanfeller claimed that he did not make the hires, but admitted to making professional introductions for some of these new employees. 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 . Spanfeller also said that he did not ask Katie to fire Susie, only to be in the room while I had the conversation about Susies future with the company., Spanfeller ended up firing Banikarim himself, and then, months later, hiring Angela Persaud for the chief talent officer job after a public search. No one has been named interim editor, and there is no succession plan in place. Spanfeller admitted he contacted Maidment in June after receiving my initial email requesting an interview. In his email to the staff, Spanfeller described this story as one that had been commissioned by the site, and attempted to paint the reporting process behind it as haphazard and unfair. 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. [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. Or knowledgeable writers?, Asked about the survey, Rogers said he thinks its responses will accurately and fully reflect Deadspin readers opinions of the site. 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.

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