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. 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. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge.. Asked about the contract, Spanfeller responded, I firmly believe in editorial integrity. Ive reached out to Spanfeller for comment multiple times over the past few days and have yet to hear back. Use this information as you see fit. The Daily Meal was acquired by Tronc in 2016. 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. Spanfeller Hired Media Friends/Former Colleagues to Fill G/O Media Roles Just After Claiming He Had No Plans for Major Turnover. 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. I was unclear about what she did. Youre not qualified. Another was more direct: Thats Jim wanting to be in control. Jim Spanfeller . Its something that Im working to improve. [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". 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. 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. 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. These conversations reveal that Spanfellers biggest effect on the company since taking over has been a deflation of morale. We had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. 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. 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 . 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. 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. 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 was CEO from 2001 to 2009and Playboywhere he was a senior vice president from 1989 to 1993. It will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, he told Insider, and hunt for acquisitions in 2022. (10 is very satisfied, 1 is very unsatisfied); What do you like MOST about Deadspin? Stay up to date with what you want to know. The union said that it wants the money to translate into higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and a focus on talent retention. Voting precincts and districts. In all of those cases Jim listened to my arguments and in many cases agreed with me and the issue was settled, he wrote in response to one question. 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. Where people are registered to vote. Nearly two dozen current G/O Media employees spoke to Deadspin for this story. "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. "We needed to change a lot of things, and change is hard.". 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. (Deadspin reached out to 10 former Spanfeller employees at The Daily Meal; four consented to be interviewed, though all declined to be named because they fear retribution from Spanfeller or their current 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. (Spanfeller told Deadspin that he and Callahan had only been in a single meeting that I recall.). When Rogers was hired less than a week after McAvoy told the SVP that she would be able to interview for the job, she said, she realized that he must have been chosen well before. pretty big scoop from me Jim Spanfeller is a herb https://t.co/gZDCs6mfhC. I am a father of three wonderful woman. 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. "You can write a blog, just don't publish them here.". Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. 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. 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. (Spanfeller denies this claim.). Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. 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. In his email to the staff, Spanfeller described this story as one that had been commissioned by the site, and attempted to paint the reporting process behind it as haphazard and unfair. But before a formal interview process could take place, Spanfeller filled the jobs with his ex-colleagues. 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. In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. "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. At an all-staff meeting this week, Knight told Spanfeller that August 15 is the target completion date, which Spanfeller told Deadspin he believes is achievable. He also claimed to have hired four women for major roles though, one of these jobs has not been filled yet, as Spanfeller instead claims he plans to give it to a woman. It was four days old. 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. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. Spanfeller said the goal was to find out what the key points of attraction are for our visitors.. 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. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. Katie then refused to assume the HR lead role around other wider layoffs at the company. It wasnt collaborative.. Legal review is often a lengthy process involving multiple reads, so talking to a lawyer is certainly not an indication that we would publish without completing the reporting process. Jeremy Gordon Oct292019 03:41PM EST. Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. 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. The JW Player was an interim step, Spanfeller said. 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. The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. 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. The CEO alleged. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Jim Spanfeller discover inside connections to recommended . James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009. 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. When one reviews the actual questions one might feel even more uneasy. My management style has been widely reported on over the years and the picture you are painting does not comport with that. The anti-herb agenda is being suppressed.. 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? I am and will continue to be a very strong advocate for my team.. Soon after Flanagan started, other members of the sales team began to question his ability to do the job he was hired forspecifically, his ability to represent the websites and the company mission. Multiple people who worked for him at The Daily Meal (part of Spanfeller Media Group) told Deadspin that Spanfeller couldnt cede any control. They cant even pitch effectively, said another employee who was present. 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. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience?, My management was straight-up scared of him, said a staffer who worked at the site for two years and had responsibilities on both the editorial and marketing sides of the company. In one case, sources say Spanfeller did offer to promote a woman to run human resources, but on the condition she fire another woman at the company as her first order of business. The company is also on the hunt for acquisitions, according to Spanfeller. They include: (Spanfeller declined to be interviewed in person but answered emailed questions. It also wasnt communicated to me as a promotion until the day it was emailed out to the company.. Email us. "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. So Out of Touch: Gen Z Congressman-Elect Mocks RNC Tweet Criticizing Him For His Housing Woes. Everyone can seeit on the pageor at least, everyone could see it before the censorship. 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. Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin. 4. Jim Spanfeller Biography. (Pontius left the company.) Or to keep it anonymous, click here. Its everything Ive wanted and more.. 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. 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. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein said. Im not building a club, we are working to build a successful companyand that depends on great women and men.. In one instance in which Spanfeller tried to promote a woman within the company, his offer came with strings attached. When she tried to edit the post, she was greeted by the following image: Attempts to create a new post were similarly thwarted. "[17], "Great Hill Partners Agrees to Acquire Gizmodo Media Group", "Great Hill Partners Acquires Gizmodo Media Group", "President & CEO, Jim Spanfeller Named as IAB Chairman", "Alumni Album: Helping Us Connect to the Web", "Advertising; 4 Young Executives On Move at Newsweek", "Playboy Hires 2 New Execs; Title of Publisher Goes to 1", "New Gizmodo boss Jim Spanfeller is an old school digital media vet", "After Days Of Resignations, The Last Of The Deadspin Staff Has Quit", "Deadspin Is ZombifiedBut Gawker's Content Warriors Fight On", "The Media-Sensational Rise and Fall of "Jim Spanfeller Is a Herb", "GMG Union votes no confidence in G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jim_Spanfeller&oldid=1074755870, This page was last edited on 2 March 2022, at 00:52. (check all that apply); and What do you like LEAST about Deadspin? The only person that I was aware of that was calling directly on clients was an SVP at The Onion and that was to sell creative services, he said. 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. Have a tip we should know? The job, however, came with a condition, they said: Pontiuss first order of business would be to fire newsroom editorial director Susie Banikarim. 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.. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. After two years of mainly working from home, the company wants everyone back in the office four days a week. 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. Spanfeller said no one told him that a female VP was already successfully performing that job before he hired Thompson. 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 a follow-up meeting with Spanfeller about the story, she suggested that hard financial data might not be their audiences central interest. I expect to be treated the way I treat people., This pattern played out three more times in Spanfellers first few months as CEO. 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 . Ad revenue rebounded, Spanfeller told Insider last year. That is absurd. A leading digital publisher producing category leaders The Daily Meal and The Active Times. 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. 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. Editorial director Paul Maidment, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes and The Daily Meal. [4] He soon switched to the business side of the paper, and later took a tour through Europe. 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. The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. 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 . Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. 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). G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . I found this troubling but was okay with it given the circumstances. 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. The next day she refused to join me in communicating our plans to Susie. 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. 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. 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. [9], In 1996, Spanfeller left his job at Inc., where he had become publisher, to become publisher of Yahoo! James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 20012009. I Close-Read the 113-Page Complaint Trying to Ban the Abortion Pill in Texas. And I didnt know what Sean was doing. While Carmichael was on a plane to Paris, I discovered that G/O had changed her accounts URL from emma.kinja.com to lajskhclsahkchkad.kinja.com, while going to emma.kinja.com now redirects to the new URL, at the time of the change, it simply showed a broken page. As you know, one reason that I dont believe that publications should write about themselves is because I fear it damages perceived external credibility in editorial independence, which, if anything, makes keeping advertisers at bay harder, not easier. I have definitely given positive feedback to numerous women, including senior executives in edit, sales, and marketing, he offered instead. Its Extremely Revealing. On July 9, he hired Faiza Javaid as deputy general counsel, a position that was posted publicly. Mr. Rich, who will report to G/O Media Chief Executive Jim Spanfeller, . 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. When I followed up about the meeting the next day with Spanfeller, I was told it was canceled. Great Hill Partners and current CEO Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes, bought these sites and the Onion from Univision Communications Inc. in April. Successfully sold . Well keep fighting for whats right. When asked if it was inaccurate, then, to say she had accepted the job, Spanfeller did not respond. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. 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. 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. James J. Spanfeller is president of The Spanfeller Group, a management consultancy focusing on digital strategy, audience development, revenue acceleration and talent acquisition. [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. 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. Computing. 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. Spanfeller said the company hopes to expand into areas like travel, music, business, and news. "I think that most media company CEOs probably are as involved as I am," Spanfeller said. I read that she's a registered Republican in Texas. 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. A source at the company familiar with the situation said Thompsons hire had been flagged to upper management as a potential problem. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. 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. Oberlander actually left last week. 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. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. Sole dedication to revenue, getting it the cheapest, quickest way possible. 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. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. 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. As I said in the article, some of the celebs I mentioned could have changed their political leanings. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. My territory has been cut in half. New York City. 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. 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. 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. 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.
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