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. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. 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. 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 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 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. That is clearly evident when you note the poor syntax and galling bias of the questions. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. 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.. 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. [14] A subsequent Deadspin post mocked Spanfeller as a "herb"; after being widely shared on social media, G/O Media removed the post. ), Spanfeller described the situation differently. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com Lastly, I firmly believe, personally, that Jim Spanfeller is a herb. I found this troubling but was okay with it given the circumstances. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. Find Out With This Weeks News Quiz. 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? Everyone can seeit on the pageor at least, everyone could see it before the censorship. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. View details on more than 95 Million registered voters across the United States. 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. "We are happy to hear that the company is profitable and financially stable enough for Jim Spanfeller to consider further acquisitions, and look forward to welcoming more workers into our union," the G/O Media union said in a statement. 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. The sales employee (who is not an SVP) wasnt surprised to hear that Spanfeller didnt know what she did. Reverse Phone Search Tool And much more all for free! Gaffney said the firm was prepared to hold onto the investment for a decade or more and that Spanfeller, a former Forbes and Playboy executive, does not have a time frame for preparing the company for a sale. He previously served as President & Chief Executive Officer of Forbes.com, a leading media Internet company, and as Executive Vice President . As the former publisher of National Geographic, Mens Health & Maximmy successful presentation & leadership skills are evident.. Spanfeller said he would go into negotiations "with an open mind and good faith," but a former executive at the company predicted conflict at the negotiating table between the union and the CEO, given their view of Spanfeller's heavy-handed leadership style. The other is still in college., Four of nine major hires have been women, Spanfeller said. "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. It was placed there without consultation or even simple communication to anyone on Deadspins staff. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge.. They cant even pitch effectively, said another employee who was present. Unlike private equity investors who financially engineer acquisitions, burdening companies they buy with debt and massive . But Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. G/O Media workers went on strike today in part to protect remote work. The CEO alleged. 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 would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., 5. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. Jim Spanfeller, We had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. I am a father of three wonderful woman. 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. That distinction quickly sparked backlash in late 2019, when the staff of Deadspin resigned over the firing of a top editor and the company's mandate that the site stick to covering sports. 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. 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. Thats not reality, a tech staffer told Deadspin. Great Hill Partners and current CEO Jim Spanfeller, formerly of Forbes, bought these sites and the Onion from Univision Communications Inc. in April. [5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. Spanfeller Hired Media Friends/Former Colleagues to Fill G/O Media Roles Just After Claiming He Had No Plans for Major Turnover. Well keep fighting for whats right. So Out of Touch: Gen Z Congressman-Elect Mocks RNC Tweet Criticizing Him For His Housing Woes. Never mind that employees called for his resignation last year. Have a tip we should know? Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. Its everything Ive wanted and more.. I first emailed Spanfeller on June 24, early in my reporting process, telling him that I was working on a story about the new hires hed brought to G/O Media in his first few months. G/O Media, from a business perspective, has turned a corner, Spanfeller says. But those efforts did not go very far, the people said, and the company has yet to mount a takeover. 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. This response, which Spanfeller emailed out along with the questions to and answers from every other executive to the entire company as an attempt to undermine this story, prompted this response from a third sales employee. G/O is still wracked with internal tensions ahead of contract negotiations with one of its editorial unions. 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. . Multiple sources say Pontius declined to go along with the plan, angering Spanfeller. Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. Political party affiliation trends based on location. "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. To hear G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller tell it, everything at his digital media company is going great. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. 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. 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. 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. The job, however, came with a condition, they said: Pontiuss first order of business would be to fire newsroom editorial director Susie Banikarim. It wasnt collaborative.. I have stood up for and advocated for my team since the day I started at G/O. 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. This sites credibility is not dependent on who and what it reports on, but on its ability to report forcefully and accurately. 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. It has introduced real uncertainty in to stocks, and Trump's agenda has become shaky. Sean Flanagan, 55, who was hired to lead east coast sales, was also installed over a female senior sales employee, who had been at the company for four years before she left in July. 3. I think it's all good," said Chris Gaffney, co-founder and managing partner at Great Hill. 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. When Spanfeller Offered to Promote a Woman to a Top Position, He Insisted She Fire a Female Editorial Director Should She Accept the Job. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . 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 .