This is the same thing that has also happened to Deadspin. Like many media companies, G/O Media's advertising business was battered by the pandemic. [14] A subsequent Deadspin post mocked Spanfeller as a "herb"; after being widely shared on social media, G/O Media removed the post. The confusion stems from a lack of communication. 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? 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. I Close-Read the 113-Page Complaint Trying to Ban the Abortion Pill in Texas. Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. Views. Clubs executive editor and managing editor, respectively, stepped down on July 12. G/O Media shuttered its politics site, Splinter, in 2019. They include: (Spanfeller declined to be interviewed in person but answered emailed questions. 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. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. 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. My territory has been cut in half. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating. 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. Use this information as you see fit. I think it makes him a bad role model for the rest of his team.. 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. Text. (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.) 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. Endnotes [1] Statement from G/O Media: "Some reports have miscast Jim Spanfeller as a private equity businessman when, in fact, he has spent his entire career in editorial-driven businesses. Other top employees who have left the company since the start of Spanfellers reign include former A.V. 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. There are regions that were within my scope of responsibilities and within my role that I cannot call on and neither can my team.. 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. No media company does. Lastly, I firmly believe, personally, that Jim Spanfeller is a herb. In reality, this story started with a tip the site received about Spanfellers hiring practices, and grew from there thanks to sources accounts. One major conflict arose over whether the company should build a video player in-house or pay for a third-party platform. I realized that I wasnt communicating my advocacy for the department or our initiatives to upper management and other departments back to the team clearly enough. 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,. Sources say the meeting concluded with an agreement that the best course of action would be to explain to Spanfeller why the player would not be finished by August 15. It also wasnt communicated to me as a promotion until the day it was emailed out to the company.. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. (Spanfeller says this is inaccurate and that he did consider other candidates for the editorial director role, but Paul quickly rose to the top after he expressed an interest in the position.) Three of the men Spanfeller hired were installed over successful women who had been at the company for years. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com
Former CEO of http://Forbes.com, Chairman Emeritus, IAB, Sec OPA NYCJoined April 2009 266Following 1,878Followers Tweets Tweets & replies Media Likes Jim Spanfeller's Tweets Jim Spanfeller @JimSpanfeller Mar 13, 2020 Good News! Top Women at the Company Expressed Interest in Filling Executive Roles and Were Promised Interview Opportunities Prior to Spanfeller Hiring His Friends, Two G/O Media employees Deadspin spoke to, who are women who have an experienced track record with the company, say Spanfeller promised to give them a chance to interview for upper-level roles. View details on more than 95 Million registered voters across the United States. John Taggart for The Washington Post via Getty Images, NOW WATCH: WATCH: How advertisers can navigate the death of third-party cookies, according to execs from Mars Petcare, R/GA, The Washington Post, and The Trade Desk, Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture. Meanwhile, many people who are still at the company feel their work is being hindered by new management. 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. 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. Great Hill Partners and current CEO Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes, bought these sites and the Onion from Univision Communications Inc. in April. Where people are registered to vote. Traffic has fallen across G/O Media's portfolio over the past two years, which Spanfeller pinned on industry-wide struggles to generate audience plus the loss of Deadspin and Splinter. Jeremy Gordon Oct292019 03:41PM EST. You wrote a 'story,'" Spanfeller recalled telling staff. 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 . 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. 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. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. In 1964, Spanfeller recieved the title of Artist of the Year from the Artists Guild of New York. in English Literature in 1979 and went to work as a reporter for the SoHo Weekly News. The CEO alleged. 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. Club executive editor Laura M. Browning and former A.V. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. Political affiliation. Deadspin cited an account from a former writer at The Daily Meal, a food and beverage site that Spanfeller founded in 2015, who claims her former boss once started screaming at her because she voiced concerns about writing a story on the websites earning figures, which she felt she was not qualified for. As I said in the article, some of the celebs I mentioned could have changed their political leanings. 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. 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. Now that we are closer to stabilizing the company, there can be a more deliberate recruitment and hiring process. 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. Im sorry that Mike didnt more clearly convey the information to me., McAvoy said, Jim has a different recollection of the facts., The SVP said she told Spanfeller that she wasnt the only person who noticed this pattern of hiring his former colleagues over women at the company, and that he should be prepared to address it. 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. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? 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. 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. The union said that it wants the money to translate into higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and a focus on talent retention. Ultimately, the issue of building a wall has raised political risk, Cramer said. G/O Media workers went on strike today in part to protect remote work. ), This isnt the first time Spanfeller has been accused of micromanaging. [5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. Thats not reality, a tech staffer told Deadspin. He said the company was just profitable before the pandemic hit its business, and is now comfortably back in the black. [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. "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 . Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. 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. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. But before a formal interview process could take place, Spanfeller filled the jobs with his ex-colleagues. 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). He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. 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. 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. 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 . And Fake. Have a tip we should know? Well keep fighting for whats right. Spanfeller said no one told him that a female VP was already successfully performing that job before he hired Thompson. In late July, more than a month after the womans conversation with Spanfeller (and after the Daily Beast and New York Post published stories about his rocky early days at the company and he became aware of the reporting process for this story about his hiring practices), that same VP was given what management called a promotion, which Spanfeller noted in his responses to Deadspin, saying that she has been promoted to VP Marketing under Bruce Rogers with wider responsibilities., I am at the same level and performing the same duties now as I was before I got this supposed promotion, the VP 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. 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). Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. 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. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. 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. Spanfeller declined to answer a question about whether he expressed these sentiments to Klancnik. 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. 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. He sits on the Board of Directors of The New York Chapter of The National Foundation for Teaching . 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. Think Youre Smarter Than a What Next Producer? Multiple sources say Pontius declined to go along with the plan, angering Spanfeller. I was sorry and that is accurate, he said. "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. In the months that followed, without posting the jobs publicly, Spanfeller, 62, hired a stable of white men to fill executive positions overseeing nearly every facet of the company. 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. (The people I work for and the people who report to me know what I do, Rogers, 63, told Deadspin in an email.). The sales employee (who is not an SVP) wasnt surprised to hear that Spanfeller didnt know what she did. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. Stay up to date with what you want to know. Ive reached out to Spanfeller for comment multiple times over the past few days and have yet to hear back. Youre not qualified. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. (check all that apply). Spanfellers cronies now fill the G/O Media positions of chief financial officer, editorial director, senior VP of marketing, VP of west coast sales, VP of east coast sales, and VP of southern sales. G/O Media, from a business perspective, has turned a corner, Spanfeller says. Sole dedication to revenue, getting it the cheapest, quickest way possible. Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma. 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. Views. "You can write a blog, just don't publish them here.". I think it's all good," said Chris Gaffney, co-founder and managing partner at Great Hill. Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. 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 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. [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. Steve Thompson, 55, was installed over a female vice president who had been running west coast sales for two and a half years. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. [9], In 1996, Spanfeller left his job at Inc., where he had become publisher, to become publisher of Yahoo! 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. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. In the culmination of a dayslong struggle to suppress a post that repeatedly referred to its CEO, Jim Spanfeller, as a herb, G/O Media has taken the drastic step of removing the article from its Kinja platform entirely. Steve Riley on February 14, 2013: Just right off the bat. View Jim Spanfeller's professional profile on LinkedIn. 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. So Out of Touch: Gen Z Congressman-Elect Mocks RNC Tweet Criticizing Him For His Housing Woes. Hes trying to micromanage, the tech employee said last week. 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.. 3. 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. It definitely feels like its the old boys club, a G/O Media employee told Deadspin. 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. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. Spanfeller admitted he contacted Maidment in June after receiving my initial email requesting an interview. Neither Sean nor Jim ever reached out to ask, Hey, what are you doing, how are you doing it, how is it working? There was never a conversation about my role, she told Deadspin. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. 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.
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