Great Hill Partners did not disclose the financial terms of the private, all equity transaction but stated in a press release that Spanfeller is an investor. 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. Where people are registered to vote. Jim Spanfeller Biography | Booking Info for Speaking Engagements The SVP shared her teams revenue goals and their success in meeting those goals, staying focused on numbers and her teams value because she knew her work would be key to profit margins. The four women who Spanfeller counts as major hires include two he hired (head of talent and deputy counsel); one he promoted from within to executive managing editor; and a yet-to-be-filled position he says he plans to offer to a woman. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. 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. 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. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. "We closed Splinter because it was a liberal political site that was losing audience in the middle of a liberal moment," he said. New York City. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. 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. Asked about the contract, Spanfeller responded, I firmly believe in editorial integrity. 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. Deadspin Editor Quits, Rails Against Bosses: 'I've Been Repeatedly Lied G/O Media shuttered its politics site, Splinter, in 2019. It was four days old. 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. During those meetings, Maidments ideaswhich included commissioning an editor outside the company to review and approve stories written by about the companywere met with unanimous opposition. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. 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. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . Have a tip we should know? I intend to continue supervising the reporting process, including legal review, and then publish a thorough and fair story, which of course would include responses from people we spoke to. Spanfeller Media Group - Wikipedia Gaffney and Spanfeller said that G/O Media is looking for acquisitions itself. Senior vice president of marketing Bruce Rogers, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. Head of The Onion, Deadspin sued for sex discrimination - New York Post "From the outset, CEO Jim Spanfeller has worked to undermine a successful site by curtailing its most well-read coverage because it makes him personally uncomfortable," the Gizmodo Media Group . In 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.
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. ), This isnt the first time Spanfeller has been accused of micromanaging. Political party affiliation trends based on location. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? We could have video analytics today. It is ridiculous to launch a management survey questioning the editorial value of the site. "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. These conversations reveal that Spanfellers biggest effect on the company since taking over has been a deflation of morale. According to his LinkedIn, Thompson is the founder of Mediacentric Inc., a multi-media representation company., A man was hired with my same title [vice president for west coast sales] to be my boss, the VP told Deadspin. The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. I never changed my mind. 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. We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. 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. Jim Spanfeller has 2 current jobs as Founder at The Daily Meal and Chief Executive Officer at G/O Media. I am and will continue to be a very strong advocate for my team.. 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. I am a father of three wonderful woman. 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). We sent a request for an explanation and did not receive a response. 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. They requested anonymity to speak candidly but their identities are known to Insider. Spanfellers all-staff email went on to accuse Deadspins staff of bias and cast doubt on the motives behind the story. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. 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. Details may include related records, political party, location, and more. 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. 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. 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 . Computing. 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. [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. "People are scared of him. 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 . At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. Holle Abee (author) from Georgia on February 14, 2013: Duff performed at W's inauguration. The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." I was disappointed. Among the multiple Gawker and/or GMG and/or G/O websites I wrote for was, for a brief stint, Deadspin, which is currently without a staff after every single one of its writers quit en masse following the firing of beloved editor Barry Petchesky, who is another friend of mine. "You're not a 'blogger,' you're a professional journalist. Voter Registration Records 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. No media company does. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller: Company Will Be Profitable by - Insider That is absurd. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. After two years of mainly working from home, the company wants everyone back in the office four days a week. Jeremy Gordon Oct292019 03:41PM EST. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. I think it's all good," said Chris Gaffney, co-founder and managing partner at Great Hill. "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. 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. Im not building a club, we are working to build a successful companyand that depends on great women and men.. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. Everyone can seeit on the pageor at least, everyone could see it before the censorship. Deadspin's entire editorial staff is gone - The Washington Post On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . 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. Oberlander actually left last week. 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. 15 Life Hacks That Are Actually Pretty Good 17,580. 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. (check all that apply). Political affiliation. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? Indeed, two former G/O Media staffers blasted Spanfeller for being stingy with resources. When confronted with this negative feedback, Spanfeller insisted that he cannot be sexist because he has daughters. Multiple sources say that Spanfeller reached out to VP of media operations Brad Klancnik to tell him he was a valuable employee and that the new owners would like him to stay at the company, but female VPs say he did not relay such messages to them. Employees across editorial, sales, and tech have left, but many of these positions, even mission-critical ones, have not been filled. 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. 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. 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. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. 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. 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. My territory has been cut in half. It wasn't Great Hill's first foray into the media business it had previously invested in IGN and sold Ziff Davis but the G/O deal was a tiny one for a firm that describes itself as "targeting investments of $25 million to $500 million.". 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. The G/O Media union sent the following statement regarding the survey: The GMG Union has made repeated good-faith efforts to cooperate with management in resolving the many outstanding issues currently facing the company, from workplace accessibility to a video player that lacks viable metrics. (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.) 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. 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 . If I had known, I would have been happy to interview her and consider her for the role., On June 20, the next time Spanfeller was in Chicago, the SVP met with him to ask why she had been overlooked. Page 1 of 9,554,641. Have a tip or story idea? Views. 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. 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? The fourth known instance of Spanfeller overlooking a woman at the company in favor of a white male former colleague also happened on the sales team. Fuck Jim Spanfeller and Paul Maidment. As traffic dipped and employees headed for the exits, staffers at the company wrote a letter to Great Hill asking that Spanfeller be replaced as CEO. Jim Spanfeller Analyzes Public Policy - Big Think tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. In addition to the annoying ads, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller also wants Kotaku to only write about video games. Jim Spanfeller - Big Think Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com
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. It also wasnt communicated to me as a promotion until the day it was emailed out to the company.. 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. Throughout his career he has recieved more than 60 awards for his work from such . Answering a similar one, he seemed to contradict himself: This concern was expressed to me and I take it very seriously. Mr. Spanfeller has a BA in English Literature from Union College, Schenectady, New York. 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. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. Meanwhile, many people who are still at the company feel their work is being hindered by new management. Jim Spanfeller Biography & Works of Art | Qart.com (check all that apply); and What do you like LEAST about Deadspin? 3. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein said. Six days after the SVPs exchange with McAvoy, Spanfeller sent an email to the entire staff announcing G/O Medias new company values. Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start. At the same time, working with the EICs to set a general editorial direction is clearly in the purview of any owner.). (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. In two cases, women asked for and were promised the opportunity to interview for executive-level positions for which they were qualified, only to see Spanfeller hire one of his former colleagues before they were given a chance to interview. 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 will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, he told Insider, and hunt for acquisitions in 2022. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. "[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. 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. Ultimately, the issue of building a wall has raised political risk, Cramer said. All rights reserved. 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. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. We had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. That union also opposes G/O Media's recent requirement to return to in-person work. "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. Gizmodo Media Staff Enraged at New CEO's 'Insane' Direction "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. Sign up for notifications from Insider! 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. 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. 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.