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. 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. Asked about the contract, Spanfeller responded, I firmly believe in editorial integrity. Have a tip we should know? "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. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. Steve Riley on February 14, 2013: Just right off the bat. Several high-ranking employees have left the company over the past three months, departments have been stretched thin, and those who remain say that Spanfellers micromanaging and inappropriate interference has hamstrung their ability to effectively do their jobs. New York City. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. The union said that it wants the money to translate into higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and a focus on talent retention. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. Spanfeller declined to answer a question about whether he expressed these sentiments to Klancnik. Six of these hires were Spanfellers colleagues from his previous jobs at Forbes, Playboy, and Ziff Davis. Who doesnt like uncompromising commentary or sports stories you couldnt find anywhere else? 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. 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. 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 sales employee (who is not an SVP) wasnt surprised to hear that Spanfeller didnt know what she did. Have a tip or story idea? When Spanfeller Offered to Promote a Woman to a Top Position, He Insisted She Fire a Female Editorial Director Should She Accept the Job. Details may include related records, political party, location, and more. The anger stems from Spanfellers apparent disregard for his own stated company values, which include a commitment to diversity and inclusion. And I didnt know what Sean was doing. 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.. 4. 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. 3. They cant even pitch effectively, said another employee who was present. They are parti pris, which is why the overwhelming majority do not do so and many will not even report on rivals for the same reason. 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. I am a father of three wonderful woman. (Pontius declined to comment. It also wasnt communicated to me as a promotion until the day it was emailed out to the company.. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. I can see why. 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. 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. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. 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. []. 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). Laura M. Browning and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, the A.V. The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. "We are happy to hear that the company is profitable and financially stable enough for Jim Spanfeller to consider further acquisitions, and look forward to welcoming more workers into our union," the G/O Media union said in a statement. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . Gov. 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. We sent a request for an explanation and did not receive a response. [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. A leading digital publisher producing category leaders The Daily Meal and The Active Times. James J. Spanfeller is president of The Spanfeller Group, a management consultancy focusing on digital strategy, audience development, revenue acceleration and talent acquisition. 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. [1] 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, 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. We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. 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. These conversations reveal that Spanfellers biggest effect on the company since taking over has been a deflation of morale. The key journalistic properties descended from . Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. . 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. 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. 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 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. 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. I have definitely given positive feedback to numerous women, including senior executives in edit, sales, and marketing, he offered instead. Jeremy Gordon Oct292019 03:41PM EST. G/O is still wracked with internal tensions ahead of contract negotiations with one of its editorial unions. Ad revenue rebounded, Spanfeller told Insider last year. 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 was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. 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. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. [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. Think Youre Smarter Than a What Next Producer? My management style has been widely reported on over the years and the picture you are painting does not comport with that. (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. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. Youre not qualified. 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 . Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start. Jim Spanfeller Biography. This response, which Spanfeller emailed out along with the questions to and answers from every other executive to the entire company as an attempt to undermine this story, prompted this response from a third sales employee. Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin. Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise. In a follow-up meeting with Spanfeller about the story, she suggested that hard financial data might not be their audiences central interest. , 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). For the life of me, I am not sure how you can have a legal review without a complete story and I cannot imagine how you can consider your work to be objective without reviewing the answers to the questions that you have asked. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. Now that we are closer to stabilizing the company, there can be a more deliberate recruitment and hiring process. . The other is still in college.. And Fake. The anti-herb agenda is being suppressed.. After Gawker's high-profile legal battle with Hulk Hogan, Univision in 2016 purchased its other media properties out of bankruptcy for $135 million, but struggled and sold the assets, including add-ons like The Onion, to Great Hill Partners in 2019. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. 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. 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. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. His skin got bright red, she said. Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. 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. [We] had a phone conversation, kind of confronting Jim about it, and he told Mike, I thought we talked about this. It was throwing Mike under the bus, and Mike told Jim that they had not talked about it. G/O Media, owner of Gizmodo and The Onion, will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, CEO Jim Spanfeller says. 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. 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. Sole dedication to revenue, getting it the cheapest, quickest way possible. Which he would do by turning Deadspin into a sports-only website. Clubs executive editor and managing editor, respectively, stepped down on July 12. 12-Year-Old Prankster Throws Dead Snake on Woman's Car and Gets Flattened by Husband 15,743. 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. 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 . "You're not a 'blogger,' you're a professional journalist. 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). 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. 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. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. 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. So put this piece on ice. The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. (Pontius left the company.) 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). Or knowledgeable writers?, Asked about the survey, Rogers said he thinks its responses will accurately and fully reflect Deadspin readers opinions of the site. You wrote a 'story,'" Spanfeller recalled telling staff. No one has been named interim editor, and there is no succession plan in place. I was unclear about what she did. All rights reserved. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. Meanwhile, many people who are still at the company feel their work is being hindered by new management. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. 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. Spanfeller said he did not recall the specific request. [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. Page 1 of 9,554,641. As traffic dipped and employees headed for the exits, staffers at the company wrote a letter to Great Hill asking that Spanfeller be replaced as CEO. I think it makes him a bad role model for the rest of his team.. Jim Spanfeller, Like many media companies, G/O Media's advertising business was battered by the pandemic. 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 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. She asked McAvoy, then her immediate supervisor, for the opportunity to interview for the position, citing her leadership of the revenue division, her construction of a diverse team, and her renown in the industry. 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. 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. 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. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. In reality, this story started with a tip the site received about Spanfellers hiring practices, and grew from there thanks to sources accounts. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. 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. "People are scared of him. 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. My territory has been cut in half. 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. 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. (Spanfeller denies this claim.). 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. Its Extremely Revealing. 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. The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! 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. Im shocked he would call that a good presentation, said the employee who was in the meeting. 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. [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment.
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