(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. 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 said the company was just profitable before the pandemic hit its business, and is now comfortably back in the black. 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. Its something that Im working to improve. I think the thing thats most strange about it is that they didnt coordinate with the editorial side of the business. This sites credibility is not dependent on who and what it reports on, but on its ability to report forcefully and accurately. 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. When asked by Deadspin why he wouldnt name an interim editor while that search took place in order to stabilize the site and ensure that the people filling in were properly compensated for their work, Spanfeller said that the Onion union demanded that we immediately promote two people into those roles. As you know, one reason that I dont believe that publications should write about themselves is because I fear it damages perceived external credibility in editorial independence, which, if anything, makes keeping advertisers at bay harder, not easier. 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. The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. My management style has been widely reported on over the years and the picture you are painting does not comport with that. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. Spanfellers all-staff email went on to accuse Deadspins staff of bias and cast doubt on the motives behind the story. Have a tip we should know? Heres The REAL Clip, Christian Walker GOES OFF on Predator Matt Schlapp for Allegedly Groping Male Campaign Staffer: Hes Done This Before, Im Sure!, LOL. 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. 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. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . [1] He is also a past Chairman of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and longtime executive board member of Digital Content Next (DCN). He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. The four women who Spanfeller counts as major hires include two he hired (head of talent and deputy counsel); one he promoted from within to executive managing editor; and a yet-to-be-filled position he says he plans to offer to a woman. Im kind of a tipsy at a bar in Paris, she added. Use this information as you see fit. Jim has a different recollection of the facts, McAvoy reiterated. In that 30-minute meeting, the woman told Deadspin, Spanfeller told her that Univision had been a bad owner and that he saw an opportunity to make improvements and turn a profit. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. 2. 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. The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. While Carmichael was on a plane to Paris, I discovered that G/O had changed her accounts URL from emma.kinja.com to lajskhclsahkchkad.kinja.com, while going to emma.kinja.com now redirects to the new URL, at the time of the change, it simply showed a broken page. 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). 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 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. 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 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.". Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein said. 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. John Taggart for The Washington Post / Getty Images. Its Extremely Revealing. "There's a fly and he's a swatter, and that's it," the former executive said. Steve Riley on February 14, 2013: Just right off the bat. 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. 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 . The Daily Meal Founder G/O Media Chief Executive Officer Board and Advisor Roles Number of Current Board & Advisor Roles 3 Number of Past Board & Advisor Roles 2 Before we go any further, I feel compelled to acknowledge that nearly everything about this item is a conflict of interest. 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. 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. "We needed to change a lot of things, and change is hard.". LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Jim Spanfeller discover inside connections to recommended . 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. This guy just seems like he doesnt like women, another added. Youre not qualified. These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. Jeremy Gordon Oct292019 03:41PM EST. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . I have stood up for and advocated for my team since the day I started at G/O. Spanfeller said the goal was to find out what the key points of attraction are for our visitors.. . 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. But Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. 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. Spanfeller Has an Alleged History of Screaming at Women Employees. 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. 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. 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. The anti-herb agenda is being suppressed.. ), Spanfeller described the situation differently. Jun 8, 2020, 7:03 AM. (Pontius left the company.) In an email, Flanagan disagreed with those assessments: Simply not true. Jim characterized that as a misunderstanding, she said. 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. These conversations reveal that Spanfellers biggest effect on the company since taking over has been a deflation of morale. 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. Spanfeller told Insider that G/O Media plans to reinvest the profits into the business. Made up mostly of the former Gawker Media sites, G/O Media has been in a near constant state of turmoil for the past few years. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. I read that she's a registered Republican in Texas. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. 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. 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). Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records. 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. 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. 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. Hes trying to micromanage, the tech employee said last week. 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. A leading digital publisher producing category leaders The Daily Meal and The Active Times. He would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., 5. 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. 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. "The fact that we could acquire it at a price that would make it one of our smallest investments is that good or bad? James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009. Another was more direct: Thats Jim wanting to be in control. It was four days old. [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. 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. in English Literature in 1979 and went to work as a reporter for the SoHo Weekly News. ), This isnt the first time Spanfeller has been accused of micromanaging. 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 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. 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 . I Close-Read the 113-Page Complaint Trying to Ban the Abortion Pill in Texas. One major conflict arose over whether the company should build a video player in-house or pay for a third-party platform. Since Spanfeller took over G/O Media in April, more than a dozen people have left the company voluntarily, in addition to the 25 people who were laid off. 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. 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. It will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, he told Insider, and hunt for acquisitions in 2022. Sources say he was retained to consult on sales and how the department could work more directly with clients, which the now-former employee says was her job. 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. 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. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. 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. 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. 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. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. (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. This conversation inspired her to write a post on the personal account she still holds on G/Os publishing platform, Kinja, titled Jim Spanfeller Is a Herb., Pronounced with a hard h, herbs are difficult to define, but typified by the individuals seen in this earlier Carmichael post about herbitude. G/O Media, from a business perspective, has turned a corner, Spanfeller says. New York City. Everyone can seeit on the pageor at least, everyone could see it before the censorship. In a follow-up meeting with Spanfeller about the story, she suggested that hard financial data might not be their audiences central interest. He sits on the Board of Directors of The New York Chapter of The National Foundation for Teaching . We shall have a discussion on the policy at the next EiCs leads meeting. Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start. The sales employee (who is not an SVP) wasnt surprised to hear that Spanfeller didnt know what she did. A week after Spanfeller insisted to Variety that 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. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. So Out of Touch: Gen Z Congressman-Elect Mocks RNC Tweet Criticizing Him For His Housing Woes. The CEO alleged. When I followed up about the meeting the next day with Spanfeller, I was told it was canceled. Jim Spanfeller Biography. Sean Flanagan, 55, who was hired to lead east coast sales, was also installed over a female senior sales employee, who had been at the company for four years before she left in July. The anger stems from Spanfellers apparent disregard for his own stated company values, which include a commitment to diversity and inclusion. 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. 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. In the meantime, Carmichael had her own message for Spanfeller: Congratulations on confirming your herb-ishness.. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com 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. 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. My territory has been cut in half. In one instance in which Spanfeller tried to promote a woman within the company, his offer came with strings attached. 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 detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. 1. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. 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). In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. Indeed, two former G/O Media staffers blasted Spanfeller for being stingy with resources. , 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). [4] He soon switched to the business side of the paper, and later took a tour through Europe. 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. 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. 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 . Think Youre Smarter Than a What Next Producer? Or knowledgeable writers?, Asked about the survey, Rogers said he thinks its responses will accurately and fully reflect Deadspin readers opinions of the site. It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. The Daily Meal was acquired by Tronc in 2016. G/O Media shuttered its politics site, Splinter, in 2019. 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. This is the same thing that has also happened to Deadspin. Spanfeller responded that he would be happy to get together, but did not say anything about open roles. In conversations with Deadspin, more than 20 employees from across the business, tech, and editorial departments of 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. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. Spanfeller said that he wasnt preventing, just delaying analytics from being implemented, on the grounds that its not particularly useful information at the moment. (The day after Deadspin contacted Spanfeller for comment, the tech team was given the green light to roll out video analytics. As for why that move was never announced, Spanfeller told Deadspin he believed Mike McAvoy would announce Rogers arrival, even though Spanfeller hired Rogers and he has announced other hires across the company since taking over. The VP had a call with McAvoy and Spanfeller to discuss the process, asking Spanfeller why he hadnt even reached out to her about the position. I told him I had a few questions Id like to ask him, and asked if he had any availability for a meeting the following day. Answering a similar one, he seemed to contradict himself: This concern was expressed to me and I take it very seriously. 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. One theory was that Spanfeller thought implementing analytics would take developer resources away from building the new video platform and player, though employees said implementing analytics is a relatively easy fix. Vice president for west coast sales Steve Thompson, who worked with Spanfeller at, Vice president for east coast sales Sean Flanagan, who worked with Spanfeller at. In an email read to Deadspin, McAvoy agreed that she was qualified for the role and said he would talk with Spanfeller to ensure she was interviewed for the new opportunity, which had not been posted publicly. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. "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 . The key journalistic properties descended from . The role was not posted nor was it communicated to me in time where I would have even been given equal opportunity to be considered, she 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. 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. The JW Player was an interim step, Spanfeller said. Steve Thompson, 55, was installed over a female vice president who had been running west coast sales for two and a half years. 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. "People are scared of him. I can see why. To hear G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller tell it, everything at his digital media company is going great. The two former staffers described Spanfeller as a micromanager who insists on approving minor budget items and sitting in on meetings far beneath his level, like editorial audience meetings with each site. Spanfeller admitted he contacted Maidment in June after receiving my initial email requesting an interview. 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. We have also learned the tech team has been asked to post the survey again. Everything theyve done in reaction to it is the herbiest shit I could possibly imagine. 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 . Great Hill Partners and current CEO Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes, bought these sites and the Onion from Univision Communications Inc. in April. Shortly after Spanfellers email was made public, Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell issued a statement in response to his accusations that the reporting process was unfair: We are in an ongoing reporting process and planning to publish the story when it is ready. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge.. Spanfeller declined to answer a question about whether he expressed these sentiments to Klancnik. Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. He did not answer a question about whether he was aware that a female VP was already leading west coast sales or that he installed a man (who also carries a VP title) above her. When asked if it was inaccurate, then, to say she had accepted the job, Spanfeller did not respond. Im sorry that Mike didnt more clearly convey the information to me., McAvoy said, Jim has a different recollection of the facts., The SVP said she told Spanfeller that she wasnt the only person who noticed this pattern of hiring his former colleagues over women at the company, and that he should be prepared to address it. Mr. McAvoy was clear to me on his opinion that he did not think she was the right choice at this time, Spanfeller said. And Fake. It wasnt collaborative.. 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. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. The private equity firm was able to snap up the deal for only about $25 million, according to a person with direct knowledge of the figure. Then, Thursday night, after Bernie Sanders tweeted in support of Deadspin, supporter collective People for Bernie tweeted the post at its new URL: After which, sometime today, the post disappeared, only to be replaced by this: Its not entirely clear which of Kinjas guidelines were violated, particularly considering that theres no agreed upon definition of what constitutes a herb. Additionally, as you are reporting here, there are numerous outstanding people, both men and women who have worked for me on more than one occasion., By July, Spanfellers third full month at the company, questions about Spanfellers commitment to his journalists editorial independence began to dominate conversation in the office. 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.
Larry Murphy Bally Sports Detroit, Articles J