It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. John Taggart for The Washington Post / Getty Images. 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. The mess at G/O Media - Columbia Journalism Review We shall have a discussion on the policy at the next EiCs leads meeting. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. 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. 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. The G/O Media union sent the following statement regarding the survey: The GMG Union has made repeated good-faith efforts to cooperate with management in resolving the many outstanding issues currently facing the company, from workplace accessibility to a video player that lacks viable metrics. [9], In 1996, Spanfeller left his job at Inc., where he had become publisher, to become publisher of Yahoo! Youre not qualified. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. 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. 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. Never mind that employees called for his resignation last year. Spanfeller declined to answer a question about whether he expressed these sentiments to Klancnik. Voting precincts and districts. We have also learned the tech team has been asked to post the survey again. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. 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). The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. Stay up to date with what you want to know. 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. 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. (The other woman on the executive leadership team, general counsel Lynn Oberlander, left the company this week.) The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." When she tried to edit the post, she was greeted by the following image: Attempts to create a new post were similarly thwarted. 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. I am and will continue to be a very strong advocate for my team.. 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. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. Deadspin Editor Fired Amid Pushback Over 'Stick to Sports' Memo 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. This Is How Things Work Now At G/O Media - Deadspin Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. 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. I think the general sentiment coming out of that meeting, at least for some of the senior sales people, was like, these guys are going to lead our sales team? Maidment never responded to my questions directly; the first time I saw his answers was when they were included in Spanfellers company-wide email, but he had this to say about his role in the newsroom: I have always shielded the editorial teams I have managed from commercial or business-side interference in what they write, which to my mind is the essence of editorial integrity. (The people I work for and the people who report to me know what I do, Rogers, 63, told Deadspin in an email.). 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. Enter Jim "Herb" Spanfeller. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. 4. "The fact that we could acquire it at a price that would make it one of our smallest investments is that good or bad? Another was more direct: Thats Jim wanting to be in control. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. 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. 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. And I didnt know what Sean was doing. 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. Email us. After two years of mainly working from home, the company wants everyone back in the office four days a week. I hired Katie who accepted the job, he wrote. ), Spanfeller described the situation differently. 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. Steve Thompson, 55, was installed over a female vice president who had been running west coast sales for two and a half years. Six of these hires were Spanfellers colleagues from his previous jobs at Forbes, Playboy, and Ziff Davis.
[5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. 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. 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Editorial director Paul Maidment, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes and The Daily Meal. 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. Political affiliation Definition | Law Insider Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma. Jim characterized that as a misunderstanding, she said. G/O Media sites generated about 45.7 million unique visitors in October, according to Comscore, down from 47.8 million in October 2020 and 101.6 million in October 2019, right before the Deadspin exodus. (10 is very satisfied, 1 is very unsatisfied); What do you like MOST about Deadspin? Former Daily News Editor in Chief Is Tapped to Run Deadspin 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,. []. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. 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.. 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. 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. This sites credibility is not dependent on who and what it reports on, but on its ability to report forcefully and accurately. [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". In an emailed statement to Deadspin, Spanfeller claimed that he did not make the hires, but admitted to making professional introductions for some of these new employees. [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. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. The sales employee (who is not an SVP) wasnt surprised to hear that Spanfeller didnt know what she did. When pressed, Knight admitted the deadline may be unrealistic. Then, in early June, former Onion CEO Mike McAvoy, whountil he was separated from the company on July 11had been leading sales across all the sites, told the SVP that Spanfeller had hired two new sales leaders, Flanagan and Thompson. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. 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. Lastly, I firmly believe, personally, that Jim Spanfeller is a herb. 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. I think it makes him a bad role model for the rest of his team.. To hear G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller tell it, everything at his digital media company is going great. Answering a similar one, he seemed to contradict himself: This concern was expressed to me and I take it very seriously. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. 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. 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. 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. Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller says the company is profitable and ready Dead and spun: a story in three meetings - Columbia Journalism Review That is absurd. When asked why he didnt consider the SVP, Spanfeller told Deadspin, I was unaware of her interest in the role and that Mike had made that commitment and Im sorry. "I think that most media company CEOs probably are as involved as I am," Spanfeller said. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. 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. That union also opposes G/O Media's recent requirement to return to in-person work. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. 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. But Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. [8] In June 1993, Spanfeller became associate publisher for advertising at Inc. magazine, replacing Kristin Norrgard, who left to become publisher of Working Woman magazine. Club executive editor Laura M. Browning and former A.V. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said.