"We closed Splinter because it was a liberal political site that was losing audience in the middle of a liberal moment," he said. 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. In the email, Spanfeller said he was "greatly concerned about the objectivity and core intentions of this piece," and questioned the editorial standards of Deadspin's editors. The digital media and blogging network, which oversees websites like Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, A.V. He said the company was just profitable before the pandemic hit its business, and is now comfortably back in the black. In addition to the annoying ads, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller also wants Kotaku to only write about video games. It has introduced real uncertainty in to stocks, and Trump's agenda has become shaky. 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 was CEO from 2001 to 2009and Playboywhere he was a senior vice president from 1989 to 1993. Mike hired Steve, and Steve hired Lance after conducting a process around each hire. Great Hill Partners vice president Eric Ahlgren and managing partner Chris Gaffney did not respond to Deadspins emailed questions. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com
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. Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. We may earn a commission from links on this page. 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. 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. No one has been named interim editor, and there is no succession plan in place. 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. Email us. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. Why Ketanji Brown Jackson Split With the Courts Liberals in a 54 Decision, the firing of beloved editor Barry Petchesky, According to Great Hill Partners website, increasingly insisted on directing editorial coverage. Enter Jim "Herb" Spanfeller. ), This isnt the first time Spanfeller has been accused of micromanaging. 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. 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. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. Voting precincts and districts. 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. The next day she refused to join me in communicating our plans to Susie. My management style has been widely reported on over the years and the picture you are painting does not comport with that. "People are scared of him. No media company does. 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. 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. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. 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. Club executive editor Laura M. Browning and former A.V. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. 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.. Jim Spanfeller @JimSpanfeller Founder of http://TheDailyMeal.comand http://TheActiveTimes.com. 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. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. G/O is still wracked with internal tensions ahead of contract negotiations with one of its editorial unions. 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 Media Group. Its everything Ive wanted and more.. Jun 8, 2020, 7:03 AM. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. 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. A source at the company familiar with the situation said Thompsons hire had been flagged to upper management as a potential problem. Several high-ranking employees have left the company over the past three months, departments have been stretched thin, and those who remain say that Spanfellers micromanaging and inappropriate interference has hamstrung their ability to effectively do their jobs. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . There are regions that were within my scope of responsibilities and within my role that I cannot call on and neither can my team.. Another former Daily Meal staffer said that management was straight-up scared of Spanfeller, adding, I can see why. Page 1 of 9,554,641. 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. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. Senior vice president of marketing Bruce Rogers, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. They include: (Spanfeller declined to be interviewed in person but answered emailed questions. ), The internal reaction to these hires has ranged from confusion to anger. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating. 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. Use this information as you see fit. 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. This guy just seems like he doesnt like women, another added. When one reviews the actual questions one might feel even more uneasy. We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. 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. 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. In a follow-up meeting with Spanfeller about the story, she suggested that hard financial data might not be their audiences central interest. G/O Media, owner of Gizmodo and The Onion, will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, CEO Jim Spanfeller says. 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 I never changed my mind. I was unclear about what she did. It wasnt collaborative.. (The other woman on the executive leadership team, general counsel Lynn Oberlander, left the company this week.) John Taggart for The Washington Post / Getty Images. He sits on the Board of Directors of The New York Chapter of The National Foundation for Teaching . 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, but Spanfeller is perhaps best known for dramatically increasing Forbes.coms focus on digital advertising (Spanfeller also previously served as chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau). Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. 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. Successfully sold . G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . Three and a half hours later, Maidment sent an email to Greenwell and me with the subject line, Reporting on ourselves. The body of the message read: This is a tradition that makes no sense. On July 9, he hired Faiza Javaid as deputy general counsel, a position that was posted publicly. Never mind that employees called for his resignation last year. Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise. And Fake. Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. (check all that apply); and What do you like LEAST about Deadspin? 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. 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. Spanfeller did offer to promote one female employee, former chief of staff for The Onion Katie Pontius, and make her the companys head of talent, but the position fell through after he demanded that she fire newsroom editorial director Susie Banikarimas her first management move, which Pontius refused, according to sources who spoke to 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. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. Its Extremely Revealing. In April, the tech team was told to move the companys video operations off of MCP, which Univision paid for to host video content, and onto JW Player, a cheaper video system. Throughout his career he has recieved more than 60 awards for his work from such . In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. Spanfellers executive assistant set up a time for us to meet. So put this piece on ice. 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. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. 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. 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. The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. 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. 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. Jim Rich, the former top editor of the New York Daily News, will start as editor-in-chief of Deadspin on Monday. Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. 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. 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. 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. 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 . 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. 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.