Stay up to date with what you want to know. 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. 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. 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. 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. At the time of publication, Carmichaels original tweet has been retweeted more than 300 times. It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. 2. 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. 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. The former staff of Splinter later launched the worker-owned Discourse Blog. These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. 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. Great Hill Partners and current CEO Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes, bought these sites and the Onion from Univision Communications Inc. in April. This is the same thing that has also happened to Deadspin. "The fact that we could acquire it at a price that would make it one of our smallest investments is that good or bad? (Though the source spoke in great detail about her experience, she requested her name not be used because she didnt want it to affect her future employment opportunities.) tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. It is ridiculous to launch a management survey questioning the editorial value of the site. 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. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. 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 CEO alleged. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. [4] He soon switched to the business side of the paper, and later took a tour through Europe. ), Spanfeller described the situation differently. 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. All rights reserved. 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. The confusion stems from a lack of communication. 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. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? 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. 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. "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. "You can write a blog, just don't publish them here.". The anti-herb agenda is being suppressed.. From a womans perspective, I did feel very belittled. 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. Lastly, I firmly believe, personally, that Jim Spanfeller is a herb. 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. "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. While these high-ranking women were being overlooked and bypassed, Spanfeller evidently was concerned about retaining at least one other VP on the sales side. Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin. Indeed, two former G/O Media staffers blasted Spanfeller for being stingy with resources. Jim Spanfeller @JimSpanfeller Founder of http://TheDailyMeal.comand http://TheActiveTimes.com. 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. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. 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 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.". I have definitely given positive feedback to numerous women, including senior executives in edit, sales, and marketing, he offered instead. 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. When one reviews the actual questions one might feel even more uneasy. Page 1 of 9,554,641. 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. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. 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. 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.. 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. 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. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. 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. 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. The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. 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. 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 . 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. Think Youre Smarter Than a What Next Producer? He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. 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. It has introduced real uncertainty in to stocks, and Trump's agenda has become shaky. In 1964, Spanfeller recieved the title of Artist of the Year from the Artists Guild of New York. 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. (The people I work for and the people who report to me know what I do, Rogers, 63, told Deadspin in an email.). 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. (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. 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. Where people are registered to vote. Club managing editor Caitlin PenzeyMoog, who both resigned on July 12. The JW Player was an interim step, Spanfeller said. When people came in with good ideas they were rejected., A woman who was hired at The Daily Meal after responding to a Craigslist post said she was once asked to write a story about a companys earnings, which she felt she wasnt qualified to write and for which she didnt receive guidance from her editors. The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. Spanfeller said the goal was to find out what the key points of attraction are for our visitors.. Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. 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. Steve Thompson, 55, was installed over a female vice president who had been running west coast sales for two and a half years. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. It is also worth noting that multiple internal candidates have expressed interest in the position of EIC of the A/V Club. The Onion union declined to comment, but a source with knowledge of the situation disputed that the union demanded promotions, saying its letter demanded action and used the words We ask for the following when addressing promotions. Holle Abee (author) from Georgia on February 14, 2013: Duff performed at W's inauguration. 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. 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. 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. View Jim Spanfeller's professional profile on LinkedIn. 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. (Spanfeller told Deadspin that he and Callahan had only been in a single meeting that I recall.). On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. The takeover of G/O Media, previosuly known as Gizmodo Media Group and Gawker Media, by former Forbes executive Jim Spanfellercontinues to throttle downhill, as one of the companys news sites, Deadspin, published a scathing expos on Friday detailing a litany of problems employees have faced since investment firm Great Hill purchased Gizmodo and placed Spanfeller in control. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. I am a father of three wonderful woman, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. 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. Jim Rich, the former top editor of the New York Daily News, will start as editor-in-chief of Deadspin on Monday. 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). Whats left of that company is currently called G/O Media. At the same time, working with the EICs to set a general editorial direction is clearly in the purview of any owner.). (The other woman on the executive leadership team, general counsel Lynn Oberlander, left the company this week.) It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. 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 . Hes trying to micromanage, the tech employee said last week. Spanfeller admitted he contacted Maidment in June after receiving my initial email requesting an interview. Details may include related records, political party, location, and more. [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. 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 Fake. 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. They requested anonymity to speak candidly but their identities are known to Insider. In one instance in which Spanfeller tried to promote a woman within the company, his offer came with strings attached. James J. Spanfeller is president of The Spanfeller Group, a management consultancy focusing on digital strategy, audience development, revenue acceleration and talent acquisition. The key journalistic properties descended from . 15 Life Hacks That Are Actually Pretty Good 17,580. 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. 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. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. 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.". 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. 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. When Spanfeller Offered to Promote a Woman to a Top Position, He Insisted She Fire a Female Editorial Director Should She Accept the Job. Gov. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? 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. 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. We could have video analytics today. 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 I said in the article, some of the celebs I mentioned could have changed their political leanings. "We needed to change a lot of things, and change is hard.". "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 management style has been widely reported on over the years and the picture you are painting does not comport with that. 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. 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. Ive reached out to Spanfeller for comment multiple times over the past few days and have yet to hear back. I am a father of three wonderful woman. It's a culture of fear," said the first former employee, who added that staffers sometimes likened meetings with Spanfeller to the "boar on the floor" scene in HBO's "Succession," where media mogul Logan Roy orders his underlings to crawl and oink like pigs. 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. In reality, this story started with a tip the site received about Spanfellers hiring practices, and grew from there thanks to sources accounts. Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start. 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. We sent a request for an explanation and did not receive a response. The other is still in college.. (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. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. 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. In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. Jim Spanfeller has 2 current jobs as Founder at The Daily Meal and Chief Executive Officer at G/O Media. The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. 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. Now that we are closer to stabilizing the company, there can be a more deliberate recruitment and hiring process. [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.