Jim Spanfeller has 2 current jobs as Founder at The Daily Meal and Chief Executive Officer at G/O Media. Clashes between the Gawker Media editorial culture and the company's new private equity owner seemed inevitable from the start. A voter's representatives in government. Im kind of a tipsy at a bar in Paris, she added. Spanfeller said the company hopes to expand into areas like travel, music, business, and news. 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. About their hires, he wrote, I introduced Steve and Lance to Mike McAvoy, but I did not make the hires. My territory has been cut in half. I told Mike, verbally and in writing, that I would be interested in taking on new responsibilities and opportunities within the organization and I would like to interview for whatever position would be a part of that, she told Deadspin. Jim Spanfeller . He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. Stay up to date with what you want to know. "We remain optimistic that our labor will be taken into consideration as this period of financial promise collides with a time that has been particularly rough on morale," the Onion Union statement said. 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. [6] Just under two years later, Spanfeller was replaced as publisher by Scott Kauffmann and became the national sales manager of Newsweek magazine in 1986. Like many media companies, G/O Media's advertising business was battered by the pandemic. 1. 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. Its hard to imagine what one would not like on that list of items, Reibstein said of the third question. I never changed my mind. Spanfeller Media is working to redefine content for the digital era. [4] He soon switched to the business side of the paper, and later took a tour through Europe. 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. View Jim Spanfeller's professional profile on LinkedIn. They cant even pitch effectively, said another employee who was present. All rights reserved. Clubs executive editor and managing editor, respectively, stepped down on July 12. "We needed to change a lot of things, and change is hard.". Just two weeks after Spanfeller and Great Hill acquired the company, and less than a week after he said in an interview with Variety that he didnt expect any layoffs, Spanfeller fired 25 people across the 400-person company, including Susie Banikarim, GMGs widely respected editorial director, and the only person of color on the executive leadership team at the time. Another former Daily Meal staffer said that management was straight-up scared of Spanfeller, adding, I can see why. Sign up for notifications from Insider! Multiple people who worked for him at The Daily Meal (part of Spanfeller Media Group) told Deadspin that Spanfeller couldnt cede any control. 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. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. The role was not posted nor was it communicated to me in time where I would have even been given equal opportunity to be considered, she said. "The fact that we could acquire it at a price that would make it one of our smallest investments is that good or bad? But Spanfeller said that he wants G/O Media to keep the voice and mission that made Gawker Media sites singular in the digital media industry. 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. 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.. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. Jim characterized that as a misunderstanding, she said. On Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees can submit anonymous reviews of their workplaces, reviews of The Daily Meal are overwhelmingly negative. No media company does. Jim Spanfeller Biography. Naturally, we were dismayed to discover one more problemthe survey placed on Deadspin. I think it makes him a bad role model for the rest of his team.. 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. I expect to be treated the way I treat people., This pattern played out three more times in Spanfellers first few months as CEO. 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. The VP had a call with McAvoy and Spanfeller to discuss the process, asking Spanfeller why he hadnt even reached out to her about the position. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. Find Out With This Weeks News Quiz. [11], Spanfeller ran Forbes.com for 8 years from 2001 to 2009, when digital and print operations were run separately. Jun 8, 2020, 7:03 AM. 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. The next day she refused to join me in communicating our plans to Susie. DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION are core to our culture, and we expect all staff to advance and promote that. Heartened, the SVP emailed Spanfeller to remind him of their meeting in April and express her hope that women, people of color, and people who identify as LGBTQ would be considered as he hired his leadership team, and to say that she looked forward to discussing her role in the organization. A leading digital publisher producing category leaders The Daily Meal and The Active Times. Below are some of the biggest revelations outlined in Deadspins roughly 7,000 word report on their parent company and its new management, which they spoke to nearly two dozen G/O Media employees for. 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. Employees across editorial, sales, and tech have left, but many of these positions, even mission-critical ones, have not been filled. Jim Spanfeller @JimSpanfeller Founder of http://TheDailyMeal.comand http://TheActiveTimes.com. Spanfeller said no one told him that a female VP was already successfully performing that job before he hired Thompson. Computing. 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. (The people I work for and the people who report to me know what I do, Rogers, 63, told Deadspin in an email.). One major conflict arose over whether the company should build a video player in-house or pay for a third-party platform. [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". Sports News Without Fear, Favor or Compromise. 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. 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. "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. 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. 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. "I think that most media company CEOs probably are as involved as I am," Spanfeller said. The anger stems from Spanfellers apparent disregard for his own stated company values, which include a commitment to diversity and inclusion. 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. Mr. Spanfeller has a BA in English Literature from Union College, Schenectady, New York. The confusion stems from a lack of communication. It was four days old. She said Spanfeller didnt have many questions for her, describing him as apathetic. Spanfeller seemed not to recall this interaction, telling Deadspin that the sales team was not covering direct clients.. Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. 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. Shortly after Spanfellers email was made public, Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell issued a statement in response to his accusations that the reporting process was unfair: We are in an ongoing reporting process and planning to publish the story when it is ready. "[17], "Great Hill Partners Agrees to Acquire Gizmodo Media Group", "Great Hill Partners Acquires Gizmodo Media Group", "President & CEO, Jim Spanfeller Named as IAB Chairman", "Alumni Album: Helping Us Connect to the Web", "Advertising; 4 Young Executives On Move at Newsweek", "Playboy Hires 2 New Execs; Title of Publisher Goes to 1", "New Gizmodo boss Jim Spanfeller is an old school digital media vet", "After Days Of Resignations, The Last Of The Deadspin Staff Has Quit", "Deadspin Is ZombifiedBut Gawker's Content Warriors Fight On", "The Media-Sensational Rise and Fall of "Jim Spanfeller Is a Herb", "GMG Union votes no confidence in G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jim_Spanfeller&oldid=1074755870, This page was last edited on 2 March 2022, at 00:52. 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. [1] He is also a past Chairman of the IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and longtime executive board member of Digital Content Next (DCN). No one has been named interim editor, and there is no succession plan in place. [] While it is what we did at Forbes that has nothing to do with the reason to do it here. The G/O Media union sent the following statement regarding the survey: The GMG Union has made repeated good-faith efforts to cooperate with management in resolving the many outstanding issues currently facing the company, from workplace accessibility to a video player that lacks viable metrics. 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. 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. [8] In June 1993, Spanfeller became associate publisher for advertising at Inc. magazine, replacing Kristin Norrgard, who left to become publisher of Working Woman magazine. Asked about the meeting, Knight initially didnt answer. I have stood up for and advocated for my team since the day I started at G/O. 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. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. 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. The union said that it wants the money to translate into higher salary minimums, trans-inclusive healthcare, and a focus on talent retention. Views. Now that we are closer to stabilizing the company, there can be a more deliberate recruitment and hiring process. 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. 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. Jim Spanfeller, 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. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. Unlike private equity investors who financially engineer acquisitions, burdening companies they buy with debt and massive . That is clearly evident when you note the poor syntax and galling bias of the questions. Six of these hires were Spanfellers colleagues from his previous jobs at Forbes, Playboy, and Ziff Davis. I am a father of three wonderful woman, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. 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.. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. Senior vice president of marketing Bruce Rogers, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma. 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. ), The internal reaction to these hires has ranged from confusion to anger. The key journalistic properties descended from . The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." 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. 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 . [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. He sits on the Board of Directors of The New York Chapter of The National Foundation for Teaching . 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). Sources say he was retained to consult on sales and how the department could work more directly with clients, which the now-former employee says was her job. He previously served as President & Chief Executive Officer of Forbes.com, a leading media Internet company, and as Executive Vice President . I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. Meanwhile, many people who are still at the company feel their work is being hindered by new management. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. Have a tip we should know? 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.
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