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. I have communicated our timeline concerns to Jim and he understands that development is not an exact science and that goals may not be hit, Knight told Deadspin. 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. The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. In turn, Spanfeller hired a number of his old media friends and former colleagues from Forbes, Playboy, and other outlets to fill top roles at G/O Media, while also failing to make public job postings for many of these roles. But those efforts did not go very far, the people said, and the company has yet to mount a takeover. 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. My territory has been cut in half. 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 . 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 . It also wasnt communicated to me as a promotion until the day it was emailed out to the company.. Which he would do by turning Deadspin into a sports-only website. 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. . Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. 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? Club managing editor Caitlin PenzeyMoog, who both resigned on July 12. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. To hear G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller tell it, everything at his digital media company is going great. 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. G/O is still wracked with internal tensions ahead of contract negotiations with one of its editorial unions. Jim has a different recollection of the facts, McAvoy reiterated. Jim Spanfeller . This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. I Close-Read the 113-Page Complaint Trying to Ban the Abortion Pill in Texas. His skin got bright red, she said. The employees, nearly all of whom requested anonymity because of fears of retaliation from company management, are angered by a lack of communication regarding company goals, seeming disregard for promoting diversity within the top ranks of the company, and by repeated and egregious interference with editorial procedures. 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. [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! 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. 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! []. 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. Successfully sold . These men, and others who now hold C-suite positions at the company, were each hired without a public recruitment process, and several were installed over high-ranking women who had been successfully performing those jobs at the company for years. 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. New York City. Spanfeller said the company hopes to expand into areas like travel, music, business, and news. Katie then refused to assume the HR lead role around other wider layoffs at the company. After Gawker's high-profile legal battle with Hulk Hogan, Univision in 2016 purchased its other media properties out of bankruptcy for $135 million, but struggled and sold the assets, including add-ons like The Onion, to Great Hill Partners in 2019. A voter's representatives in government. 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. 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. 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. I think it makes him a bad role model for the rest of his team.. "You can write a blog, just don't publish them here.". This guy just seems like he doesnt like women, another added. 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. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. I was unclear about what she did. Voting precincts and districts. Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. 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. I am a father of three wonderful woman, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. 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. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records. G/O Media sites generated about 45.7 million unique visitors in October, according to Comscore, down from 47.8 million in October 2020 and 101.6 million in October 2019, right before the Deadspin exodus. 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. But Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. 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. 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. When I followed up about the meeting the next day with Spanfeller, I was told it was canceled. in English Literature in 1979 and went to work as a reporter for the SoHo Weekly News. 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. 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. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. 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. It's a culture of fear," said the first former employee, who added that staffers sometimes likened meetings with Spanfeller to the "boar on the floor" scene in HBO's "Succession," where media mogul Logan Roy orders his underlings to crawl and oink like pigs. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The next day she refused to join me in communicating our plans to Susie. They include: (Spanfeller declined to be interviewed in person but answered emailed questions. Heres The REAL Clip, Christian Walker GOES OFF on Predator Matt Schlapp for Allegedly Groping Male Campaign Staffer: Hes Done This Before, Im Sure!, LOL. The tech team managed to execute the move in about a month, but before they had finished, Spanfeller changed course and decided that the developers should build an entirely new video platform and player from scratch, explaining the decision by saying that that was what he did at Forbes, according to employees involved. 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. Spanfeller responded that he would be happy to get together, but did not say anything about open roles. Jim Rich, the former top editor of the New York Daily News, will start as editor-in-chief of Deadspin on Monday. 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. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. 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. He said the company was just profitable before the pandemic hit its business, and is now comfortably back in the black. Have a tip we should know? ), Spanfeller described the situation differently. 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. Asked about the contract, Spanfeller responded, I firmly believe in editorial integrity. 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. 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. These conversations reveal that Spanfellers biggest effect on the company since taking over has been a deflation of morale. [1] He is also a past Chairman of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and longtime executive board member of Digital Content Next (DCN). 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. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. 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. Spanfeller admitted he contacted Maidment in June after receiving my initial email requesting an interview. 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. We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. 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. Unlike private equity investors who financially engineer acquisitions, burdening companies they buy with debt and massive . (Though the source spoke in great detail about her experience, she requested her name not be used because she didnt want it to affect her future employment opportunities.) Well keep fighting for whats right. Spanfeller also said that he did not ask Katie to fire Susie, only to be in the room while I had the conversation about Susies future with the company., Spanfeller ended up firing Banikarim himself, and then, months later, hiring Angela Persaud for the chief talent officer job after a public search. But after the staff meeting, sources say, members of the tech team held a meeting with Knight to explain why the date was unrealistic. (check all that apply). 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. 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. While cleaning house and bringing in some trusted former colleagues is not entirely uncommon in private-equity acquisitions, Spanfeller filled nearly his entire top layer of management without any public recruitment process; the only woman hired as a department head, head of talent Angela Persaud, was also the only person at that level whose job was posted publicly. Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. That is absurd. "There's a fly and he's a swatter, and that's it," the former executive said. Oberlander actually left last week. I never changed my mind. Spanfellers all-staff email went on to accuse Deadspins staff of bias and cast doubt on the motives behind the story. 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. 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. Jim Spanfeller has 2 current jobs as Founder at The Daily Meal and Chief Executive Officer at G/O Media. [He] wasnt interested in hearing what someone with 20 years of experience would say.. 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. 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. 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. "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. 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. [5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. This particular set of troubles all started when private equity firm Great Hill Partners purchased GMG and hired Spanfeller, a former Forbes.com CEO, to guide the ship. I was sorry and that is accurate, he said. 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. It has introduced real uncertainty in to stocks, and Trump's agenda has become shaky. This sites credibility is not dependent on who and what it reports on, but on its ability to report forcefully and accurately. 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,. (10 is very satisfied, 1 is very unsatisfied); What do you like MOST about Deadspin? It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. I am and will continue to be a very strong advocate for my team.. Stay up to date with what you want to know. 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. 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. He previously served as President & Chief Executive Officer of Forbes.com, a leading media Internet company, and as Executive Vice President . 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. Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. A leading digital publisher producing category leaders The Daily Meal and The Active Times. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com 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. We may earn a commission from links on this page. Jun 8, 2020, 7:03 AM. Page 1 of 9,554,641. 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. Jim characterized that as a misunderstanding, she said. [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". Never mind the recent exodus of company leadership under his tenure, including the editorial director, chief financial officer, and chief revenue officer. 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. Spanfeller said no one told him that a female VP was already successfully performing that job before he hired Thompson. It definitely feels like its the old boys club, a G/O Media employee told Deadspin. 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. Republican Strategist Goes Scorched Earth on CPAC Scam, Rips Professional Grassroots Huckster Wing of the GOP, Biden Has Worked More Days Than Congress: Fox Newss Jesse Watters Mocks House GOP Schedule, Nothingburger Probes, CPAC Crowd Stands and Cheers as Raging Steve Bannon Vows to Bring Down Fox News: Were Going To Fight You Every Step Of The Way!, Florida Bill Requiring Bloggers to Register with Government Wont Survive Court Challenge, Says UF Law Prof, CPAC Crowd Cheers Wildly as Matt Gaetz Demands Congress Defund Federal Law Enforcement, They Are Lying: Tucker Carlson Reveals Why He Will Air Hidden Surveillance Jan 6th Footage Next Week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Please Just Shut the Hell Up: Michael Steele Tells Fool Congresswoman She Has No Clue, Former Federal Prosecutor Says Rupert Murdoch Agreed with The Worst Possible Sentence in His Deposition, CNN Anchor Asks Chuck Schumer If Democratic Senators Should Still Go On Fox News In Light of Dominion Revelations, DeSantis Snaps at Reporter When Pressed On What He Would Do Differently From Biden in Ukraine, Elon Musk Blames Media for Being Racist Against Whites & Asians in Defense of Scott Adams Racist Comments, WATCH: Malcolm Nance Lashes Out at Trump MAGA Cultists In Congress Who Literally Stand for Genocide, Musks Twitter is Failing to Remove Child Porn, Even Some of the Easiest to Detect and Eliminate: NY Times Analysis, Right-Wing Twitter Mocks MSNBC Clip on Racist Alt-Right Memes Except Its 5 Years Old. "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. On July 25, a pop-up survey appeared on Deadspin asking three questions: How satisfied are you with Deadspin? 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. This is the same thing that has also happened to Deadspin. Spanfeller declined to answer a question about whether he expressed these sentiments to Klancnik. G/O Media, owner of Gizmodo and The Onion, will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, CEO Jim Spanfeller says. Sources say he was retained to consult on sales and how the department could work more directly with clients, which the now-former employee says was her job. Political affiliation. Additionally, as you are reporting here, there are numerous outstanding people, both men and women who have worked for me on more than one occasion., By July, Spanfellers third full month at the company, questions about Spanfellers commitment to his journalists editorial independence began to dominate conversation in the office. 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. Spanfeller Hired Media Friends/Former Colleagues to Fill G/O Media Roles Just After Claiming He Had No Plans for Major Turnover. 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. The Daily Meal was acquired by Tronc in 2016. Or as Carmichael explained, If you dont know what a herb is, youre probably a herb.. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. 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. We have also learned the tech team has been asked to post the survey again. Club, and Splinter, was purchased by the firm in April, along with the satirical news site The Onion, which led to a massive shift in the companys culture and considerable turnover in the top ranks or, as one G/O Media employee put it, Spanfeller has brought in a bunch of white dudes to change the company. James J. Spanfeller is president of The Spanfeller Group, a management consultancy focusing on digital strategy, audience development, revenue acceleration and talent acquisition. 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. It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. The digital media and blogging network, which oversees websites like Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, A.V. 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. "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 . Multiple sources say Pontius declined to go along with the plan, angering Spanfeller. 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. Its something that Im working to improve. Im not building a club, we are working to build a successful companyand that depends on great women and men.. 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. It was placed there without consultation or even simple communication to anyone on Deadspins staff. 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. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. 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. I can see why. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating. The only person that I was aware of that was calling directly on clients was an SVP at The Onion and that was to sell creative services, he said. 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. Who doesnt like uncompromising commentary or sports stories you couldnt find anywhere else? He would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., 5. [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. 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.. Before we go any further, I feel compelled to acknowledge that nearly everything about this item is a conflict of interest. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. 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. It was four days old. (Spanfeller told Deadspin that he and Callahan had only been in a single meeting that I recall.). 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. A week after Spanfeller insisted to Varietythat he did not plan to cut our way to growth, the CEO fired 25 employees, including in top positions, such as axing former Gizmodo Media Group editorial director Susie Banikarim. 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. G/O Media shuttered its politics site, Splinter, in 2019. I am a father of three wonderful woman. Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin.
Peachtree Hills Court Apartments,
Similarities Between Athens And The United States,
Articles J
jim spanfeller political affiliation