Combined with more data-driven metrics like unique views, how long a reader spends on a story, and how many times a story is shared, reader feedback can provide useful information. This guy just seems like he doesnt like women, another added. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. 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. Senior vice president of marketing Bruce Rogers, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. Throughout his career he has recieved more than 60 awards for his work from such . The confusion stems from a lack of communication. "You're not a 'blogger,' you're a professional journalist. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. Youre not qualified. I can see why. 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 isnt the first time Spanfeller has been accused of micromanaging. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. 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.. 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. Spanfeller responded that he would be happy to get together, but did not say anything about open roles. 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. Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. When asked if she stood by the content of the since-disappeared post, Carmichael remained steadfast: I did really careful, thorough research, and the evidence is there. "We remain optimistic that our labor will be taken into consideration as this period of financial promise collides with a time that has been particularly rough on morale," the Onion Union statement said. Gaffney and Spanfeller said that G/O Media is looking for acquisitions itself. 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. View Jim Spanfeller's professional profile on LinkedIn. The other is still in college.. 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 . The CEO alleged. "You can write a blog, just don't publish them here.". 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. [9], In 1996, Spanfeller left his job at Inc., where he had become publisher, to become publisher of Yahoo! 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. During those meetings, Maidments ideaswhich included commissioning an editor outside the company to review and approve stories written by about the companywere met with unanimous opposition. [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! 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. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. That is absurd. We sent a request for an explanation and did not receive a response. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. 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. "We closed Splinter because it was a liberal political site that was losing audience in the middle of a liberal moment," he said. I was sorry and that is accurate, he said. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating. 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. 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. 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. Steve Riley on February 14, 2013: Just right off the bat. What's happening at Deadspin is a travesty | The Outline And Fake. Or knowledgeable writers?, Asked about the survey, Rogers said he thinks its responses will accurately and fully reflect Deadspin readers opinions of the site. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. 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. 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. Its something that Im working to improve. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller: Company Will Be Profitable by - Insider [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. "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 . 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. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. [5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. While the archived version of the post did not preserve the original images, you can view a PDF of the original post below. 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. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. 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. 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. Ive reached out to Spanfeller for comment multiple times over the past few days and have yet to hear back. 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. As Spanfeller increasingly insisted on directing editorial coverage in what he believed to be more advertiser-friendly directions, clashes between him and the companys writers and editors have escalated. 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.. This Is How Things Work Now At G/O Media - Deadspin It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. [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. . Spanfeller Media Group - Wikipedia Before we go any further, I feel compelled to acknowledge that nearly everything about this item is a conflict of interest. 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.". It has introduced real uncertainty in to stocks, and Trump's agenda has become shaky. The Daily Meal was acquired by Tronc in 2016. In addition to the annoying ads, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller also wants Kotaku to only write about video games. G/O Media, from a business perspective, has turned a corner, Spanfeller says. 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. in English Literature in 1979 and went to work as a reporter for the SoHo Weekly News. Political affiliation. 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. Youre not qualified. 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. 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. ), Spanfeller described the situation differently. And I didnt know what Sean was doing. Mr. McAvoy was clear to me on his opinion that he did not think she was the right choice at this time, Spanfeller said. In an email, Flanagan disagreed with those assessments: Simply not true. Spanfeller said no one told him that a female VP was already successfully performing that job before he hired Thompson. 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. Other top employees who have left the company since the start of Spanfellers reign include former A.V. . 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. [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. Like many media companies, G/O Media's advertising business was battered by the pandemic. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. 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. 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. Spanfeller told Insider that G/O Media plans to reinvest the profits into the business. Jim Spanfeller @JimSpanfeller Founder of http://TheDailyMeal.comand http://TheActiveTimes.com. Gov. (Pontius left the company.) And as the only woman on the previous revenue leadership team, I started to wonder if women were being considered for leadership roles. Indeed, Spanfeller told Deadspin that he first contacted Rogers about the job on June 11. The key journalistic properties descended from . 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. Im shocked he would call that a good presentation, said the employee who was in the meeting. On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. 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. Three and a half hours later, Maidment sent an email to Greenwell and me with the subject line, Reporting on ourselves. The body of the message read: This is a tradition that makes no sense. Head of The Onion, Deadspin sued for sex discrimination - New York Post 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. Deadspin Editor Fired Amid Pushback Over 'Stick to Sports' Memo Political affiliation Definition | Law Insider 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. 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. Laura M. Browning and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, the A.V. 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. Jim Spanfeller - Chief Executive Officer @ G/O Media - Crunchbase "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. 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. Former Daily News Editor in Chief Is Tapped to Run Deadspin A longtime digital media veteran, Spanfeller was an unconventional choice to lead the new Gizmodo Media Group sites (The Daily Beast's CEO, Heather Dietrick, once served as president of the . These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. Another former Daily Meal staffer said that management was straight-up scared of Spanfeller, adding, I can see why. "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. [He] wasnt interested in hearing what someone with 20 years of experience would say.. G/O Media lawsuits: Two former exec allege discrimination - CNN Cramer finally reveals whether he is pro-Trump or anti-Trump - CNBC 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. Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. WV Gov. Justice switching political parties, returning to GOP James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. The job, however, came with a condition, they said: Pontiuss first order of business would be to fire newsroom editorial director Susie Banikarim. Its Extremely Revealing. Now that we are closer to stabilizing the company, there can be a more deliberate recruitment and hiring process. 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. 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. 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. Deadspin's entire editorial staff is gone - The Washington Post The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. And he made sure to make it clear that I just didnt get it in his mind that I just didnt get this whole digital thing, she said. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. Asked about the meeting, Knight initially didnt answer. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. Celebrities Who Are Republicans/Conservatives - HubPages 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. Jim has a different recollection of the facts, McAvoy reiterated. Opinion | A clash of values at former Gawker Media sites [1] The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. Jim Rich, the former top editor of the New York Daily News, will start as editor-in-chief of Deadspin on Monday. At the time of publication, Carmichaels original tweet has been retweeted more than 300 times. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. 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. That distinction quickly sparked backlash in late 2019, when the staff of Deadspin resigned over the firing of a top editor and the company's mandate that the site stick to covering sports. Jim Spanfeller Biography | Booking Info for Speaking Engagements [7], Spanfeller was named associate publisher and senior vice president of marketing of Playboy Enterprises in April 1989. Multiple sources say that Spanfeller reached out to VP of media operations Brad Klancnik to tell him he was a valuable employee and that the new owners would like him to stay at the company, but female VPs say he did not relay such messages to them. 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.
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