G/O Media lawsuits: Two former exec allege discrimination - CNN In reality, this story started with a tip the site received about Spanfellers hiring practices, and grew from there thanks to sources accounts. The Deadspin takedown covered numerous issues that have arisen since Univisions sale of the company to Great Hill, ranging from accounts of Spanfeller screaming at past employees, to allegations that the new G/O Media boss is on-boarding his old media buddies over highly qualified women who have worked at the company for years, along with numerous other accusations of mismanagement. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. These men, and others who now hold C-suite positions at the company, were each hired without a public recruitment process, and several were installed over high-ranking women who had been successfully performing those jobs at the company for years. Deadspin Editor Fired Amid Pushback Over 'Stick to Sports' Memo 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. These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. Views. The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." Or as Carmichael explained, If you dont know what a herb is, youre probably a herb.. 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. 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. In addition to the annoying ads, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller also wants Kotaku to only write about video games. The digital media and blogging network, which oversees websites like Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, A.V. 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. 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. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. 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. Unlike private equity investors who financially engineer acquisitions, burdening companies they buy with debt and massive . tips@mediaite.com, Caleb Ecarma was a reporter at Mediaite. 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. We could have video analytics today. It has introduced real uncertainty in to stocks, and Trump's agenda has become shaky. 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 . 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. Having done it at Forbes, I simply knew it could be done quickly and with incremental value to the company.. 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.". 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. I hired Katie who accepted the job, he wrote. I thought she was going to be great, and it didnt work out by her own assessment., In response to follow-up questions, Spanfeller clarified that there was never a signed offer between Pontius and the company. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. 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. While G/O Media has often placed importance on diversity among their staff and in their coverage, these executive-level jobs went to white males. 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. 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. 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.". 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. Spanfellers all-staff email went on to accuse Deadspins staff of bias and cast doubt on the motives behind the story. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! 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. 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. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. These conversations reveal that Spanfellers biggest effect on the company since taking over has been a deflation of morale. Celebrities Who Are Republicans/Conservatives - HubPages Heres The REAL Clip, Christian Walker GOES OFF on Predator Matt Schlapp for Allegedly Groping Male Campaign Staffer: Hes Done This Before, Im Sure!, LOL. Cramer finally reveals whether he is pro-Trump or anti-Trump - CNBC Greenwell told Maidment she was unwilling to shut down an ongoing reporting process in response to management demands, and Maidment continued to make his argument against the idea of reporting on G/O Mediaa hallmark of the company since its earliest days, as well as a tradition at other major publicationsin several meetings with the editors and writers he oversees. 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. I have definitely given positive feedback to numerous women, including senior executives in edit, sales, and marketing, he offered instead. [4] He soon switched to the business side of the paper, and later took a tour through Europe. 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. Jim Spanfeller - Chief Executive Officer @ G/O Media - Crunchbase 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). The post, published Tuesday evening, proved wildly popular on Twitter. Its something that Im working to improve. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. Laura M. Browning and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, the A.V. No media company does. 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. Spanfeller declined to answer a question about whether he expressed these sentiments to Klancnik. 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. 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.
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