Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Jim characterized that as a misunderstanding, she said. 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. Its motivation is simply to publish true and interesting stories, and to make sure the things powerful people would rather stay in the dark end up in the light of day. I have communicated our timeline concerns to Jim and he understands that development is not an exact science and that goals may not be hit, Knight told Deadspin. Katie then refused to assume the HR lead role around other wider layoffs at the company. Where people are registered to vote. On July 9, he hired Faiza Javaid as deputy general counsel, a position that was posted publicly. 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. This is the same thing that has also happened to Deadspin. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start. ), This isnt the first time Spanfeller has been accused of micromanaging. These include a senior vice president of marketing who last week wrote a baffling reader satisfaction survey for Deadspin at Spanfellers behest; a sales executive who, sources say, appears unable to give an effective sales pitch; and an editorial director who repeatedly attempted to kill the reporting process for this story. Additionally, Jim Spanfeller has had 6 past jobs including CEO at Forbes. 15 Life Hacks That Are Actually Pretty Good 17,580. According to multiple sources inside the company, the post even joined the leading posts from official G/O sites on the big board, a large screen in the companys New York headquarters that displays that moments most highly trafficked storiesan unusual feat for a user-generated post. 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. 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. He would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., 5. "You're not a 'blogger,' you're a professional journalist. We could have video analytics today. John Taggart for The Washington Post / Getty Images. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. The other is still in college., Four of nine major hires have been women, Spanfeller said. 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. From a womans perspective, I did feel very belittled. Spanfeller Has an Alleged History of Screaming at Women Employees. 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. Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. In the email, Spanfeller said he was "greatly concerned about the objectivity and core intentions of this piece," and questioned the editorial standards of Deadspin's editors. pretty big scoop from me Jim Spanfeller is a herb https://t.co/gZDCs6mfhC. Spanfeller responded that he would be happy to get together, but did not say anything about open roles. Computing. We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. Youre not qualified. (Spanfeller told Deadspin that he and Callahan had only been in a single meeting that I recall.). While cleaning house and bringing in some trusted former colleagues is not entirely uncommon in private-equity acquisitions, Spanfeller filled nearly his entire top layer of management without any public recruitment process; the only woman hired as a department head, head of talent Angela Persaud, was also the only person at that level whose job was posted publicly. The post was so popular, in fact, that it apparently gained the attention and ire of Spanfeller himself (perhaps partially due to the fact that someone registered Deadspin2.com and set it to redirect to Carmichaels post). It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. [He] wasnt interested in hearing what someone with 20 years of experience would say.. "We have billions of dollars available to go out and buy and make this a bigger company, and that would really be our desire," Gaffney said. [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. The Deadspin takedown covered numerous issues that have arisen since Univisions sale of the company to Great Hill, ranging from accounts of Spanfeller screaming at past employees, to allegations that the new G/O Media boss is on-boarding his old media buddies over highly qualified women who have worked at the company for years, along with numerous other accusations of mismanagement. There are regions that were within my scope of responsibilities and within my role that I cannot call on and neither can my team.. Find Out With This Weeks News Quiz. Still, tensions between management and staff are high at the company as it prepares to enter negotiations with the G/O Media editorial union, one of the two unions representing editorial workers at the company. James J. Spanfeller serves as President & Chief Executive Officer of Forbes.com, a leading media Internet company, and as Executive Vice President of Electronic Publishing for . I think it's all good," said Chris Gaffney, co-founder and managing partner at Great Hill. Or as Carmichael explained, If you dont know what a herb is, youre probably a herb.. Mr. McAvoy was clear to me on his opinion that he did not think she was the right choice at this time, Spanfeller said. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. Page 1 of 9,554,641. Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. 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. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. In the midst of the fallout, former Deadspin, Gawker, and Jezebel editor Emma Carmichael had a spirited discussion with [former Jezebel writer] Clio Chang on the overwhelming herbishness of Jim Spanfeller, she told me over the phone. Mr. Spanfeller has a BA in English Literature from Union College, Schenectady, New York. Jim Spanfeller has 2 current jobs as Founder at The Daily Meal and Chief Executive Officer at G/O Media. Spanfeller told Insider that G/O Media plans to reinvest the profits into the business. 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). Mike hired Steve, and Steve hired Lance after conducting a process around each hire. Great Hill Partners vice president Eric Ahlgren and managing partner Chris Gaffney did not respond to Deadspins emailed questions. It also wasnt communicated to me as a promotion until the day it was emailed out to the company.. In addition to poor planning and communication around the video player, multiple sources say Spanfeller wouldnt allow the tech team to implement video tracking analytics on JW Player, so no one had any idea how many views videos were getting. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. In turn, Spanfeller hired a number of his old media friends and former colleagues from Forbes, Playboy, and other outlets to fill top roles at G/O Media, while also failing to make public job postings for many of these roles. 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. The G/O Media union sent the following statement regarding the survey: The GMG Union has made repeated good-faith efforts to cooperate with management in resolving the many outstanding issues currently facing the company, from workplace accessibility to a video player that lacks viable metrics. "We remain optimistic that our labor will be taken into consideration as this period of financial promise collides with a time that has been particularly rough on morale," the Onion Union statement said. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records. Multiple sources say Pontius declined to go along with the plan, angering Spanfeller. 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 . In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. Before we go any further, I feel compelled to acknowledge that nearly everything about this item is a conflict of interest. In one instance in which Spanfeller tried to promote a woman within the company, his offer came with strings attached. [9], In 1996, Spanfeller left his job at Inc., where he had become publisher, to become publisher of Yahoo! As Spanfeller increasingly insisted on directing editorial coverage in what he believed to be more advertiser-friendly directions, clashes between him and the companys writers and editors have escalated. Everything theyve done in reaction to it is the herbiest shit I could possibly imagine. 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. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. Spanfeller said he would go into negotiations "with an open mind and good faith," but a former executive at the company predicted conflict at the negotiating table between the union and the CEO, given their view of Spanfeller's heavy-handed leadership style. In an email, Flanagan disagreed with those assessments: Simply not true. 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. According to sources familiar with the situation, the Onions union sent a letter to Spanfeller asking that he help provide a plan for the site and fill the vacuum left by top leadership. Most recently, after the latest edict that Deadspin stick to sports, its writers revolted, and Spanfeller retaliated by firing the top-ranking employee, Petchesky (Deadspins latest editor-in-chief, Megan Greenwell quit in August for many of the reasons described above). I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. It is ridiculous to launch a management survey questioning the editorial value of the site. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. 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. Once it became clear that the sales department was being restructured in Kurt Muellers absence, another female vice president, who had been at the company for four years, asked McAvoy in early June for the opportunity to be considered for an expanded sales role, providing examples to show her success at the company. Fuck Jim Spanfeller and Paul Maidment. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. Who doesnt like uncompromising commentary or sports stories you couldnt find anywhere else? In the months that followed, without posting the jobs publicly, Spanfeller, 62, hired a stable of white men to fill executive positions overseeing nearly every facet of the company. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. G/O Media, the newly formed company comprised of the assets of the former Gizmodo Media, will lay off 25 employees, according to a memo that company CEO Jim Spanfeller sent to staffers on Tuesday. 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. When asked if she stood by the content of the since-disappeared post, Carmichael remained steadfast: I did really careful, thorough research, and the evidence is there. Gaffney said the firm was prepared to hold onto the investment for a decade or more and that Spanfeller, a former Forbes and Playboy executive, does not have a time frame for preparing the company for a sale. 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. During an internal sales summit meeting in New York on June 19, sales execs practiced pitching G/O Medias general presentation, a deck of about 15 slides that tells clients why they should do business with the company. We shall have a discussion on the policy at the next EiCs leads meeting. 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. 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. Ultimately, the issue of building a wall has raised political risk, Cramer said. He would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., A fourth source, a former senior staff member at The Daily Meal who worked with Spanfeller, confirmed his temper issues and the dysfunctional nature of the workplace. Though neither Spanfeller nor Knight provided the team a hard deadline, they made clear that they wanted the task, which should have taken months, completed in a matter of weeks. The rigorous and thorough reporting, editing, and legal review process that Greenwell promised to oversee has since been completed, which is why you are reading this story now. 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. Below are some of the biggest revelations outlined in Deadspins roughly 7,000 word report on their parent company and its new management, which they spoke to nearly two dozen G/O Media employees for. 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. Vice president of sales for the south Lance Johnson, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes (and most recently worked with Bruce Rogers at a company called SITO Mobile). That the story has been submitted for legal review without the benefit of our responses leads me to the conclusion that the piece is already fully written and that our responses to questions are mere window dressing. Its something that Im working to improve. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. 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. 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. 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. A senior vice president who has worked for what is now G/O Media for four and a half years met with Spanfeller in the companys Chicago office shortly after he purchased the company in April. At the same time, working with the EICs to set a general editorial direction is clearly in the purview of any owner.). ), Spanfeller described the situation differently. The key journalistic properties descended from . I was going on the input I had been given by Mike McAvoy that he had discussed the position with her and laid out why she was not ready for the larger role. The other is still in college.. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. In the meantime, Carmichael had her own message for Spanfeller: Congratulations on confirming your herb-ishness.. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. After two years of mainly working from home, the company wants everyone back in the office four days a week. [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. 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. (check all that apply); and What do you like LEAST about Deadspin? Jim Rich, the former Daily News editor charged with bringing Deadspin back to life following a mass staff exodus, has resigned after just 18 months on the job, The Post has learned. His skin got bright red, she said. That said, I and the management team received a list of questions from the reporter working this story for Deadspin and those questions left me greatly concerned about the objectivity and core intentions of this piece. So Out of Touch: Gen Z Congressman-Elect Mocks RNC Tweet Criticizing Him For His Housing Woes. We have also learned the tech team has been asked to post the survey again. Then, in early June, former Onion CEO Mike McAvoy, whountil he was separated from the company on July 11had been leading sales across all the sites, told the SVP that Spanfeller had hired two new sales leaders, Flanagan and Thompson. (The other woman on the executive leadership team, general counsel Lynn Oberlander, left the company this week.) I realized that I wasnt communicating my advocacy for the department or our initiatives to upper management and other departments back to the team clearly enough. A spokesperson for G/O has yet to respond to a request for clarification, but we will update this post if and when that changes. I hired Katie who accepted the job, he wrote. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. In two cases, women asked for and were promised the opportunity to interview for executive-level positions for which they were qualified, only to see Spanfeller hire one of his former colleagues before they were given a chance to interview. (Spanfeller says this is inaccurate and that he did consider other candidates for the editorial director role, but Paul quickly rose to the top after he expressed an interest in the position.) Three of the men Spanfeller hired were installed over successful women who had been at the company for years. 2. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. Multiple employees on the tech team say the chief technology officer, Jesse Knight, has repeatedly shown himself unable or unwilling to stand up to Spanfeller and advocate for his team and best practice standards. As for the content of the survey, Reibstein said it is possible to read it as innocent, a way to attempt to gauge customer satisfaction, as its known in the marketing industry. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. I think the thing thats most strange about it is that they didnt coordinate with the editorial side of the business. It was placed there without consultation or even simple communication to anyone on Deadspins staff. My territory has been cut in half. What Spanfeller says is normal is, of course, a reflection of his own values, which evidently rank transparency, diversity, and inclusion as secondary concerns to financial success. She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. I am a father of three wonderful woman, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. In early April, Great Hill Partners, a private-equity firm, acquired Gizmodo Media Groupa collection of sites, formed from the assets of the old Gawker, that included Jezebel, Lifehacker, and Deadspinas well as The Onion, a satirical news site, reportedly at a fire-sale price.The company, renamed G/O Media, installed Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes.com, Playboy, and Ziff Davis, as CEO.

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