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G/O Media workers went on strike today in part to protect remote work. 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. 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. 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 one instance in which Spanfeller tried to promote a woman within the company, his offer came with strings attached. Mr. McAvoy was clear to me on his opinion that he did not think she was the right choice at this time, Spanfeller said. According to sources familiar with the situation, the tech team was instructed by Knight, who was directed by Spanfeller, to push out the survey without consent from anyone in editorial. It was placed there without consultation or even simple communication to anyone on Deadspins staff. Katie then refused to assume the HR lead role around other wider layoffs at the company. Reverse Phone Search Tool And much more all for free! Find Out With This Weeks News Quiz. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. Which he would do by turning Deadspin into a sports-only website. (check all that apply); and What do you like LEAST about Deadspin? I am and will continue to be a very strong advocate for my team.. Club executive editor Laura M. Browning and former A.V. Or as Carmichael explained, If you dont know what a herb is, youre probably a herb.. Have a tip or story idea? He previously served as President & Chief Executive Officer of Forbes.com, a leading media Internet company, and as Executive Vice President . Meanwhile, many people who are still at the company feel their work is being hindered by new management. 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. McAvoy described the SVP of marketing job as a combination of sales strategy, account management, and managing creative teamsall responsibilities that fell under the SVPs purview. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. No one has been named interim editor, and there is no succession plan in place. Page 1 of 9,554,641. The VP, who said she now reports to Thompson, said all of her previous reviews from her managers have exceeded expectations, and that she was able to more than double revenue for my region in less than a year. As the former publisher of National Geographic, Mens Health & Maximmy successful presentation & leadership skills are evident.. 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. I was sorry and that is accurate, he said. Thats not reality, a tech staffer told Deadspin. Successfully sold . It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. I was disappointed. It wasnt collaborative.. No media company does. [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. Since Spanfeller took over G/O Media in April, more than a dozen people have left the company voluntarily, in addition to the 25 people who were laid off. 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. McAvoy told her she would be able to interview for a bigger role, she said, only to follow up a few weeks later and say that Rogers had been hired. In reality, this story started with a tip the site received about Spanfellers hiring practices, and grew from there thanks to sources accounts. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. Its everything Ive wanted and more.. But Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. We could have video analytics today. 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. James J. Spanfeller is president of The Spanfeller Group, a management consultancy focusing on digital strategy, audience development, revenue acceleration and talent acquisition. 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 . Youre not qualified. There are regions that were within my scope of responsibilities and within my role that I cannot call on and neither can my team.. 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. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. When asked if it was inaccurate, then, to say she had accepted the job, Spanfeller did not respond. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. All rights reserved. Answering a similar one, he seemed to contradict himself: This concern was expressed to me and I take it very seriously. The next day she refused to join me in communicating our plans to Susie. 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. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. 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. It was four days old. [15][16] In January 2020 the GMG union, which represents the staff of G/O media, announced a vote of no confidence in CEO Jim Spanfeller citing, among other issues, a lack of willingness to negotiate for "functional editorial independence protections. 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. From a womans perspective, I did feel very belittled. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. 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. They are parti pris, which is why the overwhelming majority do not do so and many will not even report on rivals for the same reason. 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. 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. We sent a request for an explanation and did not receive a response. [7], Spanfeller was named associate publisher and senior vice president of marketing of Playboy Enterprises in April 1989. 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. Im kind of a tipsy at a bar in Paris, she added. Throughout his career he has recieved more than 60 awards for his work from such . All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. Most recently, after the latest edict that Deadspin stick to sports, its writers revolted, and Spanfeller retaliated by firing the top-ranking employee, Petchesky (Deadspins latest editor-in-chief, Megan Greenwell quit in August for many of the reasons described above). When she tried to edit the post, she was greeted by the following image: Attempts to create a new post were similarly thwarted. [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. G/O Media shuttered its politics site, Splinter, in 2019. Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start. 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. 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. In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. [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. Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. Jim Spanfeller Biography. The Deadspin takedown covered numerous issues that have arisen since Univisions sale of the company to Great Hill, ranging from accounts of Spanfeller screaming at past employees, to allegations that the new G/O Media boss is on-boarding his old media buddies over highly qualified women who have worked at the company for years, along with numerous other accusations of mismanagement. You wrote a 'story,'" Spanfeller recalled telling staff. Spanfeller said the goal was to find out what the key points of attraction are for our visitors.. 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. When confronted with this negative feedback, Spanfeller insisted that he cannot be sexist because he has daughters. 15 Life Hacks That Are Actually Pretty Good 17,580. A voter's representatives in government. For instance, Rogers, who sits in a corner office in New York, still hasnt been formally announced as a new employee internally or externally, and sources who work in sales say its unclear what his job description is, though he evidently has plenty of time to contribute to Forbes, where he posted 14 articles in July. Shortly after the sale in April, she said, she met briefly with Spanfeller and explained to him her role and responsibilities in the company, which was primarily to work directly with clients to secure partnerships, instead of going through media ad agencies. 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. 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. 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. John Taggart for The Washington Post / Getty Images. Ive reached out to Spanfeller for comment multiple times over the past few days and have yet to hear back. 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. 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. Spanfeller did offer to promote one female employee, former chief of staff for The Onion Katie Pontius, and make her the companys head of talent, but the position fell through after he demanded that she fire newsroom editorial director Susie Banikarimas her first management move, which Pontius refused, according to sources who spoke to Deadspin. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein said. View Jim Spanfeller's professional profile on LinkedIn. I never changed my mind. Gov. Clubs executive editor and managing editor, respectively, stepped down on July 12. 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. 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. He sits on the Board of Directors of The New York Chapter of The National Foundation for Teaching . 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). 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. 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. Jim Rich, the former top editor of the New York Daily News, will start as editor-in-chief of Deadspin on Monday. 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 . The rigorous and thorough reporting, editing, and legal review process that Greenwell promised to oversee has since been completed, which is why you are reading this story now. She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. Never mind that employees called for his resignation last year. In an email read to Deadspin, McAvoy agreed that she was qualified for the role and said he would talk with Spanfeller to ensure she was interviewed for the new opportunity, which had not been posted publicly. That union also opposes G/O Media's recent requirement to return to in-person work. Asked about the meeting, Knight initially didnt answer. 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. Jim Spanfeller, 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. These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. 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. Views. It also wasnt communicated to me as a promotion until the day it was emailed out to the company.. 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. [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". It has introduced real uncertainty in to stocks, and Trump's agenda has become shaky. I have definitely given positive feedback to numerous women, including senior executives in edit, sales, and marketing, he offered instead. Though neither Spanfeller nor Knight provided the team a hard deadline, they made clear that they wanted the task, which should have taken months, completed in a matter of weeks. [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! 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. This is the same thing that has also happened to Deadspin. 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. Think Youre Smarter Than a What Next Producer? It will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, he told Insider, and hunt for acquisitions in 2022. 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. That the story has been submitted for legal review without the benefit of our responses leads me to the conclusion that the piece is already fully written and that our responses to questions are mere window dressing. UPDATE: This article has been updated to remove an incorrect reference to former G/O Media Lynn Oberlander leaving her job shortly after the companys latest round of layoffs. In the meantime, Carmichael had her own message for Spanfeller: Congratulations on confirming your herb-ishness.. While we were given a 3pm deadline today to respond to dozens of questions, I understand that the folks at Deadspin have already submitted their story for legal review and plan to publish it on Wednesday all without ever seeing any of the responses to the questions that they asked. I found this troubling but was okay with it given the circumstances. 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. Who doesnt like uncompromising commentary or sports stories you couldnt find anywhere else? Use this information as you see fit. [He] wasnt interested in hearing what someone with 20 years of experience would say.. When one reviews the actual questions one might feel even more uneasy. 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 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. 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. 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. James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009. "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. pretty big scoop from me Jim Spanfeller is a herb https://t.co/gZDCs6mfhC. "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. 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. 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.. Employees in G/O Media's editorial union urged the company's private-equity owners to replace G/O Chief Executive Jim Spanfeller in a letter Monday, saying a change in leadership was . 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. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. 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. The Daily Meal was acquired by Tronc in 2016. 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. 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 Media Group. 12-Year-Old Prankster Throws Dead Snake on Woman's Car and Gets Flattened by Husband 15,743. G/O Media, the company which ran Deadspin, was acquired by the private equity group Great Hill Partners, which installed Spanfeller as CEO and gave him one mission: Make them richer. Its motivation is simply to publish true and interesting stories, and to make sure the things powerful people would rather stay in the dark end up in the light of day. 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.". I think it makes him a bad role model for the rest of his team.. (Pontius declined to comment. The former staff of Splinter later launched the worker-owned Discourse Blog. Oberlander actually left last week. 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). 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. 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. Spanfellers executive assistant set up a time for us to meet. According to Dave Reibstein, past chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Marketing Association and a professor of marketing at University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Business (where he teaches a course on market research), there are several problems with the survey. Still, tensions between management and staff are high at the company as it prepares to enter negotiations with the G/O Media editorial union, one of the two unions representing editorial workers at the company. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. Computing. Its Extremely Revealing. "The fact that we could acquire it at a price that would make it one of our smallest investments is that good or bad? "[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.