jim spanfeller political affiliation
Jim characterized that as a misunderstanding, she said. 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 Spanfeller, 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. 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. Asked about the meeting, Knight initially didnt answer. 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. On July 30, the day after I emailed reporting questions to Spanfeller, Maidment, Rogers, Jesse Knight, and Sean Flanagan, Spanfeller sent a company-wide email under the subject line Reporting on Ourselves; Deadspin Reporting On The Company and Our Executives. In the email, excerpts of which were published by media reporters from the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, Spanfeller voiced his opinion on how coverage of the company should work: I believe the solution is to have that reporting reviewed by an impartial outside editor a Public Editor, if you will [] and not just for these situations but for any situation where someone within or without the company has issues with our coverage or reporting. Oh my God, thats so funny, Carmichael said when I informed her of this latest development. It wasnt collaborative.. "We closed Splinter because it was a liberal political site that was losing audience in the middle of a liberal moment," he said. 3. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. The private equity firm was able to snap up the deal for only about $25 million, according to a person with direct knowledge of the figure. [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". (check all that apply); and What do you like LEAST about Deadspin? 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. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. When one reviews the actual questions one might feel even more uneasy. 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,. As for the content of the survey, Reibstein said it is possible to read it as innocent, a way to attempt to gauge customer satisfaction, as its known in the marketing industry. 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. I was sorry and that is accurate, he said. 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. 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. 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. View Jim Spanfeller's professional profile on LinkedIn. 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. 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. The union said that it wants the money to translate into higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and a focus on talent retention. I am a father of three wonderful woman. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein said. Traffic has fallen across G/O Media's portfolio over the past two years, which Spanfeller pinned on industry-wide struggles to generate audience plus the loss of Deadspin and Splinter. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. 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. 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. It was four days old. This guy just seems like he doesnt like women, another added. Sole dedication to revenue, getting it the cheapest, quickest way possible. 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. Find Out With This Weeks News Quiz. Then, Thursday night, after Bernie Sanders tweeted in support of Deadspin, supporter collective People for Bernie tweeted the post at its new URL: After which, sometime today, the post disappeared, only to be replaced by this: Its not entirely clear which of Kinjas guidelines were violated, particularly considering that theres no agreed upon definition of what constitutes a herb. The anti-herb agenda is being suppressed.. In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. We had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. Im shocked he would call that a good presentation, said the employee who was in the meeting. "The fact that we could acquire it at a price that would make it one of our smallest investments is that good or bad? Its Extremely Revealing. "There's a fly and he's a swatter, and that's it," the former executive said. At the same time, working with the EICs to set a general editorial direction is clearly in the purview of any owner.). (check all that apply). 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. The digital media and blogging network, which oversees websites like Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, A.V. 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. Spanfeller said he did not recall the specific request. 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. 15 Life Hacks That Are Actually Pretty Good 17,580. Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. 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 . A G/O Media spokesperson said the company plans to grow the 174-person editorial headcount to 200 by the end of the first quarter next year. 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. My territory has been cut in half. 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. Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. One major conflict arose over whether the company should build a video player in-house or pay for a third-party platform. 20 Employees Complained to Deadspin About Spanfellers Management, After interviewing nearly two dozen employees, Deadspin found that 20 people who work for 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.. , in respect of a candidate, means the name of the political party that has endorsed him or her or the word "independent", as the case may be, included in the nomination paper in accordance with subparagraph 66 (1) (a) (v). In this specific case, I have committed to the current story being fully reported and submitted for external review and, if it passes that review, it will be published. His skin got bright red, she 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.. in English Literature in 1979 and went to work as a reporter for the SoHo Weekly News. Hes trying to micromanage, the tech employee said last week. Voting precincts and districts. 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 . 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. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. Text. 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. 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. 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. Views. Oberlander actually left last week. Clubs executive editor and managing editor, respectively, stepped down on July 12. It was a welcome refrain for employees all too aware of how the company had languished under Univisions doomed ownership. 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. Im kind of a tipsy at a bar in Paris, she added. But after the staff meeting, sources say, members of the tech team held a meeting with Knight to explain why the date was unrealistic. Email us. When asked if it was inaccurate, then, to say she had accepted the job, Spanfeller did not respond. All contents 2023 The Slate Group LLC. [5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. Political affiliation. 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. 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. LinkedIn is the world's largest business network, helping professionals like Jim Spanfeller discover inside connections to recommended . [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. 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. 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. I think it's all good," said Chris Gaffney, co-founder and managing partner at Great Hill. All rights reserved. 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. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. 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. Enter Jim "Herb" Spanfeller. 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. 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 was acquired by Tronc in 2016. Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. 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. 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. New York(CNN Business) Two former executives are suing G/O Media, the parent company of sites including Gizmodo, Deadspin and The Onion, alleging discrimination and negligence. Emma Carmichael is a friend of mine, and we both worked at Gawker Media and, as it was later named after being purchased by Univision, Gizmodo Media Group, or GMG. 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. G/O Media workers went on strike today in part to protect remote work. 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. [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. Political party affiliation trends based on location. 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. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. Holle Abee (author) from Georgia on February 14, 2013: Duff performed at W's inauguration. The anger stems from Spanfellers apparent disregard for his own stated company values, which include a commitment to diversity and inclusion. 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. Shortly after the sale in April, she said, she met briefly with Spanfeller and explained to him her role and responsibilities in the company, which was primarily to work directly with clients to secure partnerships, instead of going through media ad agencies. 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. Jim Rich, the former top editor of the New York Daily News, will start as editor-in-chief of Deadspin on Monday. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. Or as Carmichael explained, If you dont know what a herb is, youre probably a herb.. 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. There are regions that were within my scope of responsibilities and within my role that I cannot call on and neither can my team.. When pressed, Knight admitted the deadline may be unrealistic. 2. It was placed there without consultation or even simple communication to anyone on Deadspins staff. Gov. 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. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. Have a tip we should know? Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. (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. Six of these hires were Spanfellers colleagues from his previous jobs at Forbes, Playboy, and Ziff Davis. (The other woman on the executive leadership team, general counsel Lynn Oberlander, left the company this week.) And I didnt know what Sean was doing. 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. Spanfellers all-staff email went on to accuse Deadspins staff of bias and cast doubt on the motives behind the story. Spanfeller said the goal was to find out what the key points of attraction are for our visitors.. 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. Employees across editorial, sales, and tech have left, but many of these positions, even mission-critical ones, have not been filled. Ive reached out to Spanfeller for comment multiple times over the past few days and have yet to hear back. I was unclear about what she did. Use this information as you see fit. Successfully sold . We have also learned the tech team has been asked to post the survey again. 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. 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. I think it makes him a bad role model for the rest of his team.. 1. Never mind that employees called for his resignation last year. 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. 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. 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. Ad revenue rebounded, Spanfeller told Insider last year. Mad Money Twitter - Jim . ), Spanfeller described the situation differently. 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. pretty big scoop from me Jim Spanfeller is a herb https://t.co/gZDCs6mfhC. Spanfeller said no one told him that a female VP was already successfully performing that job before he hired Thompson. Search over 95 Million Voter Registration Records. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge. Laura M. Browning and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, the A.V. It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. One theory was that Spanfeller thought implementing analytics would take developer resources away from building the new video platform and player, though employees said implementing analytics is a relatively easy fix. "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. Spanfellers pushed back against these internal criticisms of his questionably ethical hiring process and management style by blaming G/O Media for losing money too fast. 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. 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. 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! Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. "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 . 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. 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 . The confusion stems from a lack of communication. [14] A subsequent Deadspin post mocked Spanfeller as a "herb"; after being widely shared on social media, G/O Media removed the post. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. In two cases, women asked for and were promised the opportunity to interview for executive-level positions for which they were qualified, only to see Spanfeller hire one of his former colleagues before they were given a chance to interview. 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. Club managing editor Caitlin PenzeyMoog, who both resigned on July 12. 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). 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.". Jim Spanfeller . 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. I read that she's a registered Republican in Texas. Before we go any further, I feel compelled to acknowledge that nearly everything about this item is a conflict of interest. It is ridiculous to launch a management survey questioning the editorial value of the site. No one has been named interim editor, and there is no succession plan in place. 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. 12-Year-Old Prankster Throws Dead Snake on Woman's Car and Gets Flattened by Husband 15,743. 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