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. Vice president for west coast sales Steve Thompson, who worked with Spanfeller at, Vice president for east coast sales Sean Flanagan, who worked with Spanfeller at. Jeremy Gordon Oct292019 03:41PM EST. James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 20012009. 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. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . At the time of publication, Carmichaels original tweet has been retweeted more than 300 times. So Out of Touch: Gen Z Congressman-Elect Mocks RNC Tweet Criticizing Him For His Housing Woes. Made up mostly of the former Gawker Media sites, G/O Media has been in a near constant state of turmoil for the past few years. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. (The other woman on the executive leadership team, general counsel Lynn Oberlander, left the company this week.) Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. Which he would do by turning Deadspin into a sports-only website. 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. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. These include a senior vice president of marketing who last week wrote a baffling reader satisfaction survey for Deadspin at Spanfellers behest; a sales executive who, sources say, appears unable to give an effective sales pitch; and an editorial director who repeatedly attempted to kill the reporting process for this story. On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. 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. As with any reporting process, we asked questions intending to incorporate the answers. 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. We have also learned the tech team has been asked to post the survey again. 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. 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. G/O Media, the newly formed company comprised of the assets of the former Gizmodo Media, will lay off 25 employees, according to a memo that company CEO Jim Spanfeller sent to staffers on Tuesday. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. "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. That union also opposes G/O Media's recent requirement to return to in-person work. Page 1 of 9,554,641. Multiple sources say Pontius declined to go along with the plan, angering Spanfeller. And as the only woman on the previous revenue leadership team, I started to wonder if women were being considered for leadership roles. Indeed, Spanfeller told Deadspin that he first contacted Rogers about the job on June 11. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. (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.) Another was more direct: Thats Jim wanting to be in control. Legal review is often a lengthy process involving multiple reads, so talking to a lawyer is certainly not an indication that we would publish without completing the reporting process. 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. [He] wasnt interested in hearing what someone with 20 years of experience would say.. Soon after Flanagan started, other members of the sales team began to question his ability to do the job he was hired forspecifically, his ability to represent the websites and the company mission. 15 Life Hacks That Are Actually Pretty Good 17,580. 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. Jim Spanfeller @JimSpanfeller Founder of http://TheDailyMeal.comand http://TheActiveTimes.com. 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. 12-Year-Old Prankster Throws Dead Snake on Woman's Car and Gets Flattened by Husband 15,743. 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. [1] We have no credibility in writing about ourselves. (The people I work for and the people who report to me know what I do, Rogers, 63, told Deadspin in an email.). 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. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Katie then refused to assume the HR lead role around other wider layoffs at the company. The company is also on the hunt for acquisitions, according to Spanfeller. "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. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. Spanfeller told Insider that G/O Media plans to reinvest the profits into the business. 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. For instance, Rogers, who sits in a corner office in New York, still hasnt been formally announced as a new employee internally or externally, and sources who work in sales say its unclear what his job description is, though he evidently has plenty of time to contribute to Forbes, where he posted 14 articles in July. 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). Or to keep it anonymous, click here. This conversation inspired her to write a post on the personal account she still holds on G/Os publishing platform, Kinja, titled Jim Spanfeller Is a Herb., Pronounced with a hard h, herbs are difficult to define, but typified by the individuals seen in this earlier Carmichael post about herbitude. 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. 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. tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. Asked about the meeting, Knight initially didnt answer. It is ridiculous to launch a management survey questioning the editorial value of the site. in English Literature in 1979 and went to work as a reporter for the SoHo Weekly News. Announcing Persauds hire on July 10, Spanfeller wrote this of the process: After a very fulsome search where we interviewed dozens of qualified candidates we identified two finalists. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. 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. [7], Spanfeller was named associate publisher and senior vice president of marketing of Playboy Enterprises in April 1989. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. 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.. The union said that it wants the money to translate into higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and a focus on talent retention. G/O Media workers went on strike today in part to protect remote work. (G/O Medias Collective Bargaining Agreement contains a clause that explicitly states that editorial decisions can only be made by editorial staff members, which Spanfeller is not. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. Find Out With This Weeks News Quiz. 1. The Onion Union, which represents AV Club staffers, told Insider in a statement that it hoped "this period of prosperity creates tangible benefits for all of our members especially those whose jobs are being moved to Los Angeles, one of the most expensive cities in the world.". When confronted with this negative feedback, Spanfeller insisted that he cannot be sexist because he has daughters. Details may include related records, political party, location, and more. I found this troubling but was okay with it given the circumstances. When Spanfeller Offered to Promote a Woman to a Top Position, He Insisted She Fire a Female Editorial Director Should She Accept the Job. [We] had a phone conversation, kind of confronting Jim about it, and he told Mike, I thought we talked about this. It was throwing Mike under the bus, and Mike told Jim that they had not talked about it. I think the biggest problem was the leadership wouldnt get out of the way of everyone, one former employee told Deadspin. [12], Spanfeller took over as CEO of G/O Media when Great Hill Partners purchased the company, formerly known as Gizmodo Media Group, and The Onion from Univision on April 8, 2019, and combined the companies. 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,. In addition to the annoying ads, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller also wants Kotaku to only write about video games. 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. 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. Six days after the SVPs exchange with McAvoy, Spanfeller sent an email to the entire staff announcing G/O Medias new company values. 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.. The CEO alleged. The post was so popular, in fact, that it apparently gained the attention and ire of Spanfeller himself (perhaps partially due to the fact that someone registered Deadspin2.com and set it to redirect to Carmichaels post). 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. Laura M. Browning and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, the A.V. Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. 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. Whats left of that company is currently called G/O Media. The appropriate thing to do would be to talk to the editorial side of the business and have a clear objective for the survey.. In one case, sources say Spanfeller did offer to promote a woman to run human resources, but on the condition she fire another woman at the company as her first order of business. G/O Media, the company which ran Deadspin, was acquired by the private equity group Great Hill Partners, which installed Spanfeller as CEO and gave him one mission: Make them richer. He credited The Root for its journalism on the Black Lives Matter movement. Political party affiliation trends based on location. 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. Oberlander actually left last week. When people came in with good ideas they were rejected., A woman who was hired at The Daily Meal after responding to a Craigslist post said she was once asked to write a story about a companys earnings, which she felt she wasnt qualified to write and for which she didnt receive guidance from her editors. Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. Email us. Its everything Ive wanted and more.. Jim Spanfeller Biography. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. He previously served as President & Chief Executive Officer of Forbes.com, a leading media Internet company, and as Executive Vice President . Meanwhile, many people who are still at the company feel their work is being hindered by new management. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. Ultimately, the issue of building a wall has raised political risk, Cramer said. 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. ), This isnt the first time Spanfeller has been accused of micromanaging. 2. . Have a tip or story idea? 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. 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. Jim Rich, the former top editor of the New York Daily News, will start as editor-in-chief of Deadspin on Monday. Im shocked he would call that a good presentation, said the employee who was in the meeting. 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. 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. "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. Still, tensions between management and staff are high at the company as it prepares to enter negotiations with the G/O Media editorial union, one of the two unions representing editorial workers at the company. James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009. 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. Views. Political affiliation. Email him here: caleb@mediaite.com 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 . 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. I read that she's a registered Republican in Texas. He would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., A fourth source, a former senior staff member at The Daily Meal who worked with Spanfeller, confirmed his temper issues and the dysfunctional nature of the workplace. Editorial director Paul Maidment, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes and The Daily Meal. 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. 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 . I am a father of three wonderful woman, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. 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. In an email, Flanagan disagreed with those assessments: Simply not true. Who doesnt like uncompromising commentary or sports stories you couldnt find anywhere else? "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! 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. His skin got bright red, she said. We had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. G/O Media, owner of Gizmodo and The Onion, will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, CEO Jim Spanfeller says. Spanfeller said no one told him that a female VP was already successfully performing that job before he hired Thompson. 4. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . Most recently, after the latest edict that Deadspin stick to sports, its writers revolted, and Spanfeller retaliated by firing the top-ranking employee, Petchesky (Deadspins latest editor-in-chief, Megan Greenwell quit in August for many of the reasons described above).