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. Oberlander actually left last week. The confusion stems from a lack of communication. Elsewhere in the company, G/O Media has pushed staffers at its site the AV Club to relocate to Los Angeles from Chicago, according to a recent report in Gawker, which is now owned by Bustle Digital Group. "You can write a blog, just don't publish them here.". 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. 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. 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. In reality, this story started with a tip the site received about Spanfellers hiring practices, and grew from there thanks to sources accounts. No media company does. Clubs executive editor and managing editor, respectively, stepped down on July 12. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. This sites credibility is not dependent on who and what it reports on, but on its ability to report forcefully and accurately. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. Or knowledgeable writers?, Asked about the survey, Rogers said he thinks its responses will accurately and fully reflect Deadspin readers opinions of the site. Cramer finally reveals whether he is pro-Trump or anti-Trump - CNBC 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). In one instance in which Spanfeller tried to promote a woman within the company, his offer came with strings attached. Gizmodo and The Onion's New Owner Lays Off 25, Including - TheWrap Jeremy Gordon Oct292019 03:41PM EST. 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. It wasnt collaborative.. It will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, he told Insider, and hunt for acquisitions in 2022. Jim Spanfeller Biography | Booking Info for Speaking Engagements Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records We may earn a commission from links on this page. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. 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. In a follow-up meeting with Spanfeller about the story, she suggested that hard financial data might not be their audiences central interest. Jim Spanfeller, But Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. The CEO alleged. 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. 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. While the archived version of the post did not preserve the original images, you can view a PDF of the original post below. The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." I hired Katie who accepted the job, he wrote. G/O Media, from a business perspective, has turned a corner, Spanfeller says. . And Fake. (Spanfeller denies this claim.). Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma. Spanfeller said the goal was to find out what the key points of attraction are for our visitors.. That is absurd. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. And I didnt know what Sean was doing. Jim Spanfeller - Big Think 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. Deadspin's entire editorial staff is gone - The Washington Post Voter Registration Records (Spanfeller told Deadspin that he and Callahan had only been in a single meeting that I recall.). 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. Holle Abee (author) from Georgia on February 14, 2013: Duff performed at W's inauguration. 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. The other is still in college.. Spanfeller said the company hopes to expand into areas like travel, music, business, and news. Reverse Phone Search Tool And much more all for free! Mr. Rich, who will report to G/O Media Chief Executive Jim Spanfeller, . (Pontius declined to comment. Views. 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. Unlike private equity investors who financially engineer acquisitions, burdening companies they buy with debt and massive . Spanfeller Hired Media Friends/Former Colleagues to Fill G/O Media Roles Just After Claiming He Had No Plans for Major Turnover. 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. 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 . They requested anonymity to speak candidly but their identities are known to Insider. Spanfeller, who became head of the digital media company when GMG was purchased by private equity firm Great Hill Partners, told staff that he expected the site's direct advertising to "take the. 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. Jim Spanfeller the beleaguered boss of G/O Media, which owns The Onion and Deadspin is being sued by two former executives who claim in separate lawsuits that he discriminated against . 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. Head of The Onion, Deadspin sued for sex discrimination - New York Post He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. 1. 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. Ad revenue rebounded, Spanfeller told Insider last year. 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. She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. "People are scared of him. Spanfeller said that he wasnt preventing, just delaying analytics from being implemented, on the grounds that its not particularly useful information at the moment. (The day after Deadspin contacted Spanfeller for comment, the tech team was given the green light to roll out video analytics. Enter Jim "Herb" Spanfeller. Ex-Deadspin EIC Jim Rich resigns in latest turmoil at G/O Media While these high-ranking women were being overlooked and bypassed, Spanfeller evidently was concerned about retaining at least one other VP on the sales side. As the former publisher of National Geographic, Mens Health & Maximmy successful presentation & leadership skills are evident.. 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 . 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. 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. 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. New York City. Employees across editorial, sales, and tech have left, but many of these positions, even mission-critical ones, have not been filled.