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. 4 Dumb Ways Your Favorite Sites Are Dying | Cracked.com Indeed, two former G/O Media staffers blasted Spanfeller for being stingy with resources. 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. Jim Spanfeller, Thats not reality, a tech staffer told Deadspin. 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. Greenwell told Maidment she was unwilling to shut down an ongoing reporting process in response to management demands, and Maidment continued to make his argument against the idea of reporting on G/O Mediaa hallmark of the company since its earliest days, as well as a tradition at other major publicationsin several meetings with the editors and writers he oversees. Gov. (10 is very satisfied, 1 is very unsatisfied); What do you like MOST about Deadspin? Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise. Another was more direct: Thats Jim wanting to be in control. Political affiliation. 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. 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. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Other top employees who have left the company since the start of Spanfellers reign include former A.V. Club managing editor Caitlin PenzeyMoog, who both resigned on July 12. Computing. Spanfeller, who became head of the digital media company when GMG was purchased by private equity firm Great Hill Partners, told staff that he expected the site's direct advertising to "take the. If I had known, I would have been happy to interview her and consider her for the role., On June 20, the next time Spanfeller was in Chicago, the SVP met with him to ask why she had been overlooked. We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . 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. 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. Successfully sold . 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. [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! 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. 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. 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. These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. Six days after the SVPs exchange with McAvoy, Spanfeller sent an email to the entire staff announcing G/O Medias new company values. Jim Spanfeller Biography. 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 think that most media company CEOs probably are as involved as I am," Spanfeller said. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. 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 other is still in college.. What's happening at Deadspin is a travesty | The Outline All rights reserved. The union said that it wants the money to translate into higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and a focus on talent retention. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. Jim Spanfeller . 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. [5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. pretty big scoop from me Jim Spanfeller is a herb https://t.co/gZDCs6mfhC. 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. Deadspin Editor Fired Amid Pushback Over 'Stick to Sports' Memo 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. And Fake. The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." Spanfeller also said that he did not ask Katie to fire Susie, only to be in the room while I had the conversation about Susies future with the company., Spanfeller ended up firing Banikarim himself, and then, months later, hiring Angela Persaud for the chief talent officer job after a public search. The other is still in college., Four of nine major hires have been women, Spanfeller said. 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. During Jim Spanfeller's younger years, he lived in Pennsylvania and recieved his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1952 from the Philladelphia Academy of the Fine Arts. Three and a half hours later, Maidment told us to put the story on ice, but both Spanfeller and Maidment maintain that Spanfeller never explicitly or implicitly directed the story to be killed. 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. G/O Media lawsuits: Two former exec allege discrimination - CNN Spanfellers all-staff email went on to accuse Deadspins staff of bias and cast doubt on the motives behind the story. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. 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. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. 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. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. 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,. Club executive editor Laura M. Browning and former A.V. 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. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. 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.. Everything theyve done in reaction to it is the herbiest shit I could possibly imagine. Unlike private equity investors who financially engineer acquisitions, burdening companies they buy with debt and massive . Just two weeks after Spanfeller and Great Hill acquired the company, and less than a week after he said in an interview with Variety that he didnt expect any layoffs, Spanfeller fired 25 people across the 400-person company, including Susie Banikarim, GMGs widely respected editorial director, and the only person of color on the executive leadership team at the time. "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. You wrote a 'story,'" Spanfeller recalled telling staff. "You're not a 'blogger,' you're a professional journalist. 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. 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 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. 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. I hired Katie who accepted the job, he wrote. Sign up for notifications from Insider! Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . 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. Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. 20 Employees Complained to Deadspin About Spanfellers Management, After interviewing nearly two dozen employees, Deadspin found that 20 people who work for 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.. For the last two questions, the options were the same: Uncompromising commentary, sports stories I cant find anywhere else, knowledgeable writers, broad scope of coverage, political coverage and strong political point of view, and criticism and coverage of other media companies.. While the archived version of the post did not preserve the original images, you can view a PDF of the original post below. Enter Jim "Herb" Spanfeller. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. 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. And I didnt know what Sean was doing. She said Spanfeller told her that he was unaware of what she did at the company, and that she replied: That doesnt help, because that says you not only didnt know what I did, but you also had no interest in meeting the only woman on the revenue leadership team who is an SVP who has been successful, according to meeting her revenue and finance goals. She said the conversation ended with Spanfeller saying, Im sorry, I dont know what else you want me to say., Spanfeller confirmed the womans account to Deadspin. Spanfellers cronies now fill the G/O Media positions of chief financial officer, editorial director, senior VP of marketing, VP of west coast sales, VP of east coast sales, and VP of southern sales. Never mind the recent exodus of company leadership under his tenure, including the editorial director, chief financial officer, and chief revenue officer. I was unclear about what she did. Have a tip we should know? Never mind that employees called for his resignation last year. Celebrities Who Are Republicans/Conservatives - HubPages Head of The Onion, Deadspin sued for sex discrimination - New York Post