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. 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. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. Elsewhere in the company, G/O Media has pushed staffers at its site the AV Club to relocate to Los Angeles from Chicago, according to a recent report in Gawker, which is now owned by Bustle Digital Group. Use this information as you see fit. This guy just seems like he doesnt like women, another added. Meanwhile, many people who are still at the company feel their work is being hindered by new management. I was sorry and that is accurate, he said. In April, the tech team was told to move the companys video operations off of MCP, which Univision paid for to host video content, and onto JW Player, a cheaper video system. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. Over the last few weeks, during their attempts to hinder or prevent the publication of this story, Maidment and Spanfeller invoked concerns about Deadspins credibility in covering G/O Media. [15][16] In January 2020 the GMG union, which represents the staff of G/O media, announced a vote of no confidence in CEO Jim Spanfeller citing, among other issues, a lack of willingness to negotiate for "functional editorial independence protections. 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. Indeed, two former G/O Media staffers blasted Spanfeller for being stingy with resources. The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. 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. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Views. Without posting the jobs publicly, Spanfeller hired a stable of white men to fill executive positions overseeing nearly every facet of the company., You also had no interest in meeting the only woman on the revenue leadership team who is an SVP who has been successful., As the only woman on the previous revenue leadership team, I started to wonder if women were being considered for leadership roles., 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., The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey., Chief financial officer Tom Callahan, who worked at Forbes while Spanfeller worked there. Spanfeller accused writers and editors of acting in bad faith based on a list of questions submitted to him before publication and the fact that a draft of the article had been sent for legal. Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. In one instance in which Spanfeller tried to promote a woman within the company, his offer came with strings attached. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. 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. A source at the company familiar with the situation said Thompsons hire had been flagged to upper management as a potential problem. "The fact that we could acquire it at a price that would make it one of our smallest investments is that good or bad? In the culmination of a dayslong struggle to suppress a post that repeatedly referred to its CEO, Jim Spanfeller, as a herb, G/O Media has taken the drastic step of removing the article from its Kinja platform entirely. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. Political affiliation Definition | Law Insider Lastly, I firmly believe, personally, that Jim Spanfeller is a herb. 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. Have a tip or story idea? Jim Spanfeller Biography | Booking Info for Speaking Engagements 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. In the meantime, Carmichael had her own message for Spanfeller: Congratulations on confirming your herb-ishness.. 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. Which he would do by turning Deadspin into a sports-only website. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. 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. Hes trying to micromanage, the tech employee said last week. "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. James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 20012009. 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 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. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller Tells Employees to 'Brace for Impact' of "From the outset, CEO Jim Spanfeller has worked to undermine a successful site by curtailing its most well-read coverage because it makes him personally uncomfortable," the Gizmodo Media Group . My territory has been cut in half. 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. 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. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? 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. They requested anonymity to speak candidly but their identities are known to Insider. 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. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller: Company Will Be Profitable by - Insider Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. 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. Everything theyve done in reaction to it is the herbiest shit I could possibly imagine. Political party affiliation trends based on location. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. 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. Sign up for notifications from Insider! The confusion stems from a lack of communication. On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. G/O Media lawsuits: Two former exec allege discrimination - CNN She said Spanfeller didnt have many questions for her, describing him as apathetic. Spanfeller seemed not to recall this interaction, telling Deadspin that the sales team was not covering direct clients.. One major conflict arose over whether the company should build a video player in-house or pay for a third-party platform. , in respect of a candidate, means the name of the political party that has endorsed him or her or the word "independent", as the case may be, included in the nomination paper in accordance with subparagraph 66 (1) (a) (v). 1. Spanfellers pushed back against these internal criticisms of his questionably ethical hiring process and management style by blaming G/O Media for losing money too fast. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." 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). In its brief life, the postwritten by Emma Carmichael, a former editor at a former version of the companywas viewed nearly 100,000 times and was tweeted out by the official People for Bernie Twitter account. Oberlander actually left last week. [7], Spanfeller was named associate publisher and senior vice president of marketing of Playboy Enterprises in April 1989. He said the company was just profitable before the pandemic hit its business, and is now comfortably back in the black. Email us. 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. Jim Spanfeller @JimSpanfeller Founder of http://TheDailyMeal.comand http://TheActiveTimes.com. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . 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. Well keep fighting for whats right. Spanfeller says Pontius accepted the job, but he decided she was not a good fit for this position after Pontius refused to join me in communicating our plans to fire Banikarim. Ex-Deadspin EIC Jim Rich resigns in latest turmoil at G/O Media The union said that it wants the money to translate into higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and a focus on talent retention. Two other major jobs Spanfeller gave to women include his new head of talent and deputy counsel, which were both outside hires; he did give a promotion to one woman, who he made deputy editorial director. 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. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. 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 . That is clearly evident when you note the poor syntax and galling bias of the questions. You wrote a 'story,'" Spanfeller recalled telling staff. The next day she refused to join me in communicating our plans to Susie. To hear G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller tell it, everything at his digital media company is going great. Asked about the contract, Spanfeller responded, I firmly believe in editorial integrity. 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. Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . It definitely feels like its the old boys club, a G/O Media employee told Deadspin. 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. A voter's representatives in government. 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. [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. Steve Thompson, 55, was installed over a female vice president who had been running west coast sales for two and a half years. Ad revenue rebounded, Spanfeller told Insider last year. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. Views. 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. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. (Pontius declined to comment. G/O Media workers went on strike today in part to protect remote work. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. I have definitely given positive feedback to numerous women, including senior executives in edit, sales, and marketing, he offered instead. 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. Jun 8, 2020, 7:03 AM. It wasn't Great Hill's first foray into the media business it had previously invested in IGN and sold Ziff Davis but the G/O deal was a tiny one for a firm that describes itself as "targeting investments of $25 million to $500 million.". 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. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. 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. Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. When confronted with this negative feedback, Spanfeller insisted that he cannot be sexist because he has daughters. 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. Now that we are closer to stabilizing the companys finances, we can take even more time and be more deliberate in our hiring, which the SVP Talent is already doing.. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. (check all that apply); and What do you like LEAST about Deadspin? Flanagan volunteered to go first, and what followed wasnt overwhelmingly inspiring, as one sales employee who was at the meeting put it: Flanagan read word for word what was on the slides, two people present confirmed. This Is How Things Work Now At G/O Media - Deadspin Other top employees who have left the company since the start of Spanfellers reign include former A.V. "People are scared of him. Never mind the recent exodus of company leadership under his tenure, including the editorial director, chief financial officer, and chief revenue officer. It was placed there without consultation or even simple communication to anyone on Deadspins staff. 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. Jim has a different recollection of the facts, McAvoy reiterated. At the same time, working with the EICs to set a general editorial direction is clearly in the purview of any owner.). It was four days old. The anti-herb agenda is being suppressed.. 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. For instance, Rogers, who sits in a corner office in New York, still hasnt been formally announced as a new employee internally or externally, and sources who work in sales say its unclear what his job description is, though he evidently has plenty of time to contribute to Forbes, where he posted 14 articles in July. According to multiple sources familiar with the situation, in April Spanfeller offered the job of head of talent to Katie Pontius, who until recently was the chief of staff for The Onion, Inc. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein said. The job, however, came with a condition, they said: Pontiuss first order of business would be to fire newsroom editorial director Susie Banikarim. Have a tip we should know? [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. pretty big scoop from me Jim Spanfeller is a herb https://t.co/gZDCs6mfhC. Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. G/O Media, owner of Gizmodo and The Onion, will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, CEO Jim Spanfeller says. 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. Jeremy Gordon Oct292019 03:41PM EST. 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. He previously served as President & Chief Executive Officer of Forbes.com, a leading media Internet company, and as Executive Vice President . 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. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. [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". 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. No media company does. Shortly after the sale in April, she said, she met briefly with Spanfeller and explained to him her role and responsibilities in the company, which was primarily to work directly with clients to secure partnerships, instead of going through media ad agencies. Holle Abee (author) from Georgia on February 14, 2013: Duff performed at W's inauguration. Popular Gaming Website Kotaku Might Be Going Away In Wake of Clubs executive editor and managing editor, respectively, stepped down on July 12. Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. As with any reporting process, we asked questions intending to incorporate the answers.
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