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Mr. McAvoy was clear to me on his opinion that he did not think she was the right choice at this time, Spanfeller said. 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. I hired Katie who accepted the job, he wrote. The former staff of Splinter later launched the worker-owned Discourse Blog. 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. (Pontius declined to comment. 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. Political party affiliation trends based on location. 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. (Pontius left the company.) Computing. This is the same thing that has also happened to Deadspin. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. In early April, Great Hill Partners, a private-equity firm, acquired Gizmodo Media Groupa collection of sites, formed from the assets of the old Gawker, that included Jezebel, Lifehacker, and Deadspinas well as The Onion, a satirical news site, reportedly at a fire-sale price.The company, renamed G/O Media, installed Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes.com, Playboy, and Ziff Davis, as CEO. Text. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. A spokesperson for G/O has yet to respond to a request for clarification, but we will update this post if and when that changes. 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. 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. I am and will continue to be a very strong advocate for my team.. 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. 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.. The company is also on the hunt for acquisitions, according to Spanfeller. (G/O Medias Collective Bargaining Agreement contains a clause that explicitly states that editorial decisions can only be made by editorial staff members, which Spanfeller is not. 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. I think the thing thats most strange about it is that they didnt coordinate with the editorial side of the business. Have a tip we should know? 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. Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. Never mind the recent exodus of company leadership under his tenure, including the editorial director, chief financial officer, and chief revenue officer. 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.. 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. 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. A voter's representatives in government. 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. As with any reporting process, we asked questions intending to incorporate the answers. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Page 1 of 9,554,641. 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). 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. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. Two other major jobs Spanfeller gave to women include his new head of talent and deputy counsel, which were both outside hires; he did give a promotion to one woman, who he made deputy editorial director. James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009. 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. Hes trying to micromanage, the tech employee said last week. 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. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . Great Hill Partners and current CEO Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes, bought these sites and the Onion from Univision Communications Inc. in April. 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. While the archived version of the post did not preserve the original images, you can view a PDF of the original post below. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. Spanfeller said the goal was to find out what the key points of attraction are for our visitors.. 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. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. 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. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Indeed, two former G/O Media staffers blasted Spanfeller for being stingy with resources. 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. The digital media and blogging network, which oversees websites like Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, A.V. It was placed there without consultation or even simple communication to anyone on Deadspins staff. We shall have a discussion on the policy at the next EiCs leads meeting. Jim has a different recollection of the facts, McAvoy reiterated. [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. That evening, the woman received an email from McAvoy telling her that the SVP of marketing job had been filled with someone who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. 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. Once it became clear that the sales department was being restructured in Kurt Muellers absence, another female vice president, who had been at the company for four years, asked McAvoy in early June for the opportunity to be considered for an expanded sales role, providing examples to show her success at the company. The Daily Meal was acquired by Tronc in 2016. Jim Spanfeller has 2 current jobs as Founder at The Daily Meal and Chief Executive Officer at G/O Media. 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. 4. Senior vice president of marketing Bruce Rogers, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. Vice president for west coast sales Steve Thompson, who worked with Spanfeller at, Vice president for east coast sales Sean Flanagan, who worked with Spanfeller at. My territory has been cut in half. 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. Jack Crosbie, a former Splinter contractor and co-owner of Discourse, said that traffic declined at Splinter because G/O did not refill lost positions. 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. 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. [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. 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 post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. On July 25, a pop-up survey appeared on Deadspin asking three questions: How satisfied are you with Deadspin? 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. 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 . 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. She asked McAvoy, then her immediate supervisor, for the opportunity to interview for the position, citing her leadership of the revenue division, her construction of a diverse team, and her renown in the industry. She said Spanfeller told her that he was unaware of what she did at the company, and that she replied: That doesnt help, because that says you not only didnt know what I did, but you also had no interest in meeting the only woman on the revenue leadership team who is an SVP who has been successful, according to meeting her revenue and finance goals. She said the conversation ended with Spanfeller saying, Im sorry, I dont know what else you want me to say., Spanfeller confirmed the womans account to Deadspin. 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. One theory was that Spanfeller thought implementing analytics would take developer resources away from building the new video platform and player, though employees said implementing analytics is a relatively easy fix. 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 . A leading digital publisher producing category leaders The Daily Meal and The Active Times. Another was more direct: Thats Jim wanting to be in control. In an email, Flanagan disagreed with those assessments: Simply not true. In 1964, Spanfeller recieved the title of Artist of the Year from the Artists Guild of New York. 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. And I didnt know what Sean was doing. Everyone can seeit on the pageor at least, everyone could see it before the censorship. "You're not a 'blogger,' you're a professional journalist. The confusion stems from a lack of communication. One of the former staffers said that as companies sought to double down on diversity and inclusion during the summer of 2020, the branded content team received incoming requests from companies hoping to fund content for The Root, G/O Media's Black news publication. Whats left of that company is currently called G/O Media. 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. That union also opposes G/O Media's recent requirement to return to in-person work. 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. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. 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,. Where people are registered to vote. I found this troubling but was okay with it given the circumstances. New York(CNN Business) Two former executives are suing G/O Media, the parent company of sites including Gizmodo, Deadspin and The Onion, alleging discrimination and negligence. I can see why. Which he would do by turning Deadspin into a sports-only website. As for why that move was never announced, Spanfeller told Deadspin he believed Mike McAvoy would announce Rogers arrival, even though Spanfeller hired Rogers and he has announced other hires across the company since taking over. I have definitely given positive feedback to numerous women, including senior executives in edit, sales, and marketing, he offered instead. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. 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. 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. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? 3. 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. Sign up for notifications from Insider! 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. This sites credibility is not dependent on who and what it reports on, but on its ability to report forcefully and accurately. It wasnt collaborative.. Im not building a club, we are working to build a successful companyand that depends on great women and men.. 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. (Spanfeller told Deadspin that he and Callahan had only been in a single meeting that I recall.). Whenever a publication shuts down, as has happened more and more over the last few years, it undergoes a public eulogizing by its employees, the friends of its employees, the people who wanted to work there, and most importantly the readers, whose tributes are . I have stood up for and advocated for my team since the day I started at G/O. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com Before we go any further, I feel compelled to acknowledge that nearly everything about this item is a conflict of interest. I was sorry and that is accurate, he said. I never changed my mind. During an internal sales summit meeting in New York on June 19, sales execs practiced pitching G/O Medias general presentation, a deck of about 15 slides that tells clients why they should do business with the company. . The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. 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. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. He would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., 5. 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. "We needed to change a lot of things, and change is hard.". She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. Its everything Ive wanted and more.. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. (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.) 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. The Daily Meal Founder G/O Media Chief Executive Officer Board and Advisor Roles Number of Current Board & Advisor Roles 3 Number of Past Board & Advisor Roles 2 Its Extremely Revealing. Enter Jim "Herb" Spanfeller. 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. Spanfellers all-staff email went on to accuse Deadspins staff of bias and cast doubt on the motives behind the story. A source said Spanfeller told editors-in-chief of the companys websites that he had chosen Maidment, 68, for the job before the sale was completed and did not interview other candidates, including Banikarim. Multiple people who worked for him at The Daily Meal (part of Spanfeller Media Group) told Deadspin that Spanfeller couldnt cede any control. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. 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. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. In addition to clichs like we are ambitious and be passionate and have fun, the fifth value on the list said, We will be at our best when we embrace many different perspectives and experiences. 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. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . [14] A subsequent Deadspin post mocked Spanfeller as a "herb"; after being widely shared on social media, G/O Media removed the post. To hear G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller tell it, everything at his digital media company is going great. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. (Spanfeller denies this claim.). We could have video analytics today. A source at the company familiar with the situation said Thompsons hire had been flagged to upper management as a potential problem. Im kind of a tipsy at a bar in Paris, she added. Employees across editorial, sales, and tech have left, but many of these positions, even mission-critical ones, have not been filled. I am a father of three wonderful woman, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. (The people I work for and the people who report to me know what I do, Rogers, 63, told Deadspin in an email.). Lastly, I firmly believe, personally, that Jim Spanfeller is a herb. When I followed up about the meeting the next day with Spanfeller, I was told it was canceled. Jim Spanfeller . When asked if it was inaccurate, then, to say she had accepted the job, Spanfeller did not respond. 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. I was disappointed. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating. Jim Rich, the former Daily News editor charged with bringing Deadspin back to life following a mass staff exodus, has resigned after just 18 months on the job, The Post has learned. 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. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records. Shortly after Spanfellers email was made public, Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell issued a statement in response to his accusations that the reporting process was unfair: We are in an ongoing reporting process and planning to publish the story when it is ready. Laura M. Browning and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, the A.V. In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. Spanfeller said he did not recall the specific request. 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.". 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. 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 . Its something that Im working to improve. This has led to some protest among employees, as one staffer told Deadspin, It definitely feels like its the old boys club. A second employee told the site, This guy just seems like he doesnt like women.. 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. Never mind that employees called for his resignation last year. 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 Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. And Fake. Like many media companies, G/O Media's advertising business was battered by the pandemic. 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. Multiple sources say Pontius declined to go along with the plan, angering Spanfeller. [9], In 1996, Spanfeller left his job at Inc., where he had become publisher, to become publisher of Yahoo! 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 appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. It is ridiculous to launch a management survey questioning the editorial value of the site. At the same time, working with the EICs to set a general editorial direction is clearly in the purview of any owner.). 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. "We have billions of dollars available to go out and buy and make this a bigger company, and that would really be our desire," Gaffney said. New York City. 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. The key journalistic properties descended from . Another former Daily Meal staffer said that management was straight-up scared of Spanfeller, adding, I can see why. We had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. Gaffney and Spanfeller said that G/O Media is looking for acquisitions itself. 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 . Club executive editor Laura M. Browning and former A.V. When one reviews the actual questions one might feel even more uneasy. 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 . All rights reserved. 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.