In a follow-up meeting with Spanfeller about the story, she suggested that hard financial data might not be their audiences central interest. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. Takeaways From Deadspin's Expos of G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller No media company does. Use this information as you see fit. I was unclear about what she did. The mess at G/O Media - Columbia Journalism Review Another was more direct: Thats Jim wanting to be in control. . 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. In addition to the annoying ads, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller also wants Kotaku to only write about video games. 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. Im kind of a tipsy at a bar in Paris, she added. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. The job, however, came with a condition, they said: Pontiuss first order of business would be to fire newsroom editorial director Susie Banikarim. (Spanfeller denies this claim.). That is absurd. Its Extremely Revealing. A leading digital publisher producing category leaders The Daily Meal and The Active Times. Everything theyve done in reaction to it is the herbiest shit I could possibly imagine. 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. 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. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . Ultimately, the issue of building a wall has raised political risk, Cramer said. 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. 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. 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. There are regions that were within my scope of responsibilities and within my role that I cannot call on and neither can my team.. G/O is still wracked with internal tensions ahead of contract negotiations with one of its editorial unions. G/O Media shuttered its politics site, Splinter, in 2019. I hold myself to a high regard and ensuring that Im respectful to others and create a community of camaraderie, hire for diversity, and that there is a work life balance, she told Deadspin. (Spanfeller says this is inaccurate and that he did consider other candidates for the editorial director role, but Paul quickly rose to the top after he expressed an interest in the position.) Three of the men Spanfeller hired were installed over successful women who had been at the company for years. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. Gov. According to sources familiar with the situation, the Onions union sent a letter to Spanfeller asking that he help provide a plan for the site and fill the vacuum left by top leadership. Spanfeller responded that he would be happy to get together, but did not say anything about open roles. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com Back to the Office, But Only to Picket - Curbed Throughout his career he has recieved more than 60 awards for his work from such . It is also worth noting that multiple internal candidates have expressed interest in the position of EIC of the A/V Club. The Onion union declined to comment, but a source with knowledge of the situation disputed that the union demanded promotions, saying its letter demanded action and used the words We ask for the following when addressing promotions. Or as Carmichael explained, If you dont know what a herb is, youre probably a herb.. When asked by Deadspin why he wouldnt name an interim editor while that search took place in order to stabilize the site and ensure that the people filling in were properly compensated for their work, Spanfeller said that the Onion union demanded that we immediately promote two people into those roles. 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.". 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. Email us. As with any reporting process, we asked questions intending to incorporate the answers. Thats not reality, a tech staffer told Deadspin. Jim Spanfeller - Big Think That is clearly evident when you note the poor syntax and galling bias of the questions. (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.) Spanfeller admitted he contacted Maidment in June after receiving my initial email requesting an interview. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records. Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. 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. Spanfeller told Insider that G/O Media plans to reinvest the profits into the business. Think Youre Smarter Than a What Next Producer? In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. These actions are clearly management attempting to target, and even intimidate, staff into changing their editorial stance in spite of our contract-protected independence, especially as it comes on the heels of managements repeated attempts to kill this story as it was being reported about the company. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records Spanfellers executive assistant set up a time for us to meet. 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. 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. 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. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. 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. Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. 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. Additionally, Jim Spanfeller has had 6 past jobs including CEO at Forbes. And Fake. These two highly talented HR executives then met with a number of people around our company including representatives of the unions., When asked why Spanfeller didnt follow this thorough search process before filling seven key positions with his former coworkers, he blamed his hiring practices on the financial shape of the company. The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. 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. 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. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. 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. 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 . [1] "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. 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. 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. The Daily Meal was acquired by Tronc in 2016. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . 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. Well keep fighting for whats right. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. The key journalistic properties descended from . Or to keep it anonymous, click here. The anti-herb agenda is being suppressed.. Fuck Jim Spanfeller and Paul Maidment. I have definitely given positive feedback to numerous women, including senior executives in edit, sales, and marketing, he offered instead. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. . "[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. After two years of mainly working from home, the company wants everyone back in the office four days a week. 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 next day she refused to join me in communicating our plans to Susie. Never mind the recent exodus of company leadership under his tenure, including the editorial director, chief financial officer, and chief revenue officer. 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. 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. Unlike private equity investors who financially engineer acquisitions, burdening companies they buy with debt and massive . 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. Spanfeller Hired Media Friends/Former Colleagues to Fill G/O Media Roles Just After Claiming He Had No Plans for Major Turnover. Spanfeller Has an Alleged History of Screaming at Women Employees. Asked about the contract, Spanfeller responded, I firmly believe in editorial integrity. Spanfeller said the goal was to find out what the key points of attraction are for our visitors.. 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. 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. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein 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. 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. 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. 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. Spanfeller said he did not recall the specific request. 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. 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. Like many media companies, G/O Media's advertising business was battered by the pandemic. "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. Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. Gizmodo Media Staff Enraged at New CEO's 'Insane' Direction G/O Media Workers Call on Owners to Replace CEO - WSJ According to Dave Reibstein, past chairman of the Board of Directors of the American Marketing Association and a professor of marketing at University of Pennsylvanias Wharton School of Business (where he teaches a course on market research), there are several problems with the survey. Where people are registered to vote. Sole dedication to revenue, getting it the cheapest, quickest way possible. 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. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . When Rogers was hired less than a week after McAvoy told the SVP that she would be able to interview for the job, she said, she realized that he must have been chosen well before. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. And I didnt know what Sean was doing. Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start.
Condesa Mexico City Real Estate For Sale, Most Dangerous Neighborhoods In Kansas City Kansas, What Does It Mean When A Guy Calls You Soft, Articles J