"People are scared of him. My management style has been widely reported on over the years and the picture you are painting does not comport with that. 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. 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. While the archived version of the post did not preserve the original images, you can view a PDF of the original post below. The other is still in college.. Jim Spanfeller @JimSpanfeller Founder of http://TheDailyMeal.comand http://TheActiveTimes.com. She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. "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. 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. ), The internal reaction to these hires has ranged from confusion to anger. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. Spanfeller admitted he contacted Maidment in June after receiving my initial email requesting an interview. 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). I am a father of three wonderful woman. 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. [5] Upon returning from Europe, Spanfeller took a position at AMP Marketing Systems. In an email, Flanagan disagreed with those assessments: Simply not true. My territory has been cut in half. 3. 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 was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. No media company does. At an all-staff meeting this week, Knight told Spanfeller that August 15 is the target completion date, which Spanfeller told Deadspin he believes is achievable. 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. I think the general sentiment coming out of that meeting, at least for some of the senior sales people, was like, these guys are going to lead our sales team? It wasnt collaborative.. Jim characterized that as a misunderstanding, she said. When one reviews the actual questions one might feel even more uneasy. in English Literature in 1979 and went to work as a reporter for the SoHo Weekly News. 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. McAvoy described the SVP of marketing job as a combination of sales strategy, account management, and managing creative teamsall responsibilities that fell under the SVPs purview. 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. 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 intend to continue supervising the reporting process, including legal review, and then publish a thorough and fair story, which of course would include responses from people we spoke to. New York City. [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". 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 . Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating. This guy just seems like he doesnt like women, another added. The CEO alleged. His skin got bright red, she said. Youre not qualified. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. Page 1 of 9,554,641. A leading digital publisher producing category leaders The Daily Meal and The Active Times. 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. 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. We could have video analytics today. According to his LinkedIn, Thompson is the founder of Mediacentric Inc., a multi-media representation company., A man was hired with my same title [vice president for west coast sales] to be my boss, the VP told Deadspin. 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.. 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. Have a tip we should know? 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). I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. Spanfeller Media Group ( SMG ), a subsidiary of publishing company Tribune Publishing, is a digital media company based in New York City. James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009. I realized that I wasnt communicating my advocacy for the department or our initiatives to upper management and other departments back to the team clearly enough. Hes trying to micromanage, the tech employee said last week. I have stood up for and advocated for my team since the day I started at G/O. (Spanfeller told Deadspin that he and Callahan had only been in a single meeting that I recall.). Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. 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. According to sources familiar with the situation, the tech team was instructed by Knight, who was directed by Spanfeller, to push out the survey without consent from anyone in editorial. Multiple people who worked for him at The Daily Meal (part of Spanfeller Media Group) told Deadspin that Spanfeller couldnt cede any control. 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. But those efforts did not go very far, the people said, and the company has yet to mount a takeover. Spanfellers executive assistant set up a time for us to meet. I was unclear about what she did. Computing. Before he started full time in early June, Flanagan was brought in as a consultant just after Spanfeller took over G/O Media. Over the last few weeks, during their attempts to hinder or prevent the publication of this story, Maidment and Spanfeller invoked concerns about Deadspins credibility in covering G/O Media. In addition to the removal of the post itself, Carmichael also discovered that shes now unable to use her personal Kinja account at all. 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. According to multiple sources inside the company, the post even joined the leading posts from official G/O sites on the big board, a large screen in the companys New York headquarters that displays that moments most highly trafficked storiesan unusual feat for a user-generated post. 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. Editorial director Paul Maidment, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes and The Daily Meal. 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. "You're not a 'blogger,' you're a professional journalist. 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. One of the former staffers said that as companies sought to double down on diversity and inclusion during the summer of 2020, the branded content team received incoming requests from companies hoping to fund content for The Root, G/O Media's Black news publication. When she tried to edit the post, she was greeted by the following image: Attempts to create a new post were similarly thwarted. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. 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. "We were a leftist site, not a liberal one, which gives you a sense of how closely Spanfeller followed our work," he said. We sent a request for an explanation and did not receive a response. (The people I work for and the people who report to me know what I do, Rogers, 63, told Deadspin in an email.). 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. 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. To hear G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller tell it, everything at his digital media company is going great. I found this troubling but was okay with it given the circumstances. Katie then refused to assume the HR lead role around other wider layoffs at the company. 12-Year-Old Prankster Throws Dead Snake on Woman's Car and Gets Flattened by Husband 15,743. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the company would become "nicely profitable" by the end of the year, after it's been . 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. 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. Two other major jobs Spanfeller gave to women include his new head of talent and deputy counsel, which were both outside hires; he did give a promotion to one woman, who he made deputy editorial director. (10 is very satisfied, 1 is very unsatisfied); What do you like MOST about Deadspin? I think it's all good," said Chris Gaffney, co-founder and managing partner at Great Hill. Views. 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. Spanfeller accused writers and editors of acting in bad faith based on a list of questions submitted to him before publication and the fact that a draft of the article had been sent for legal. 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. Other top employees who have left the company since the start of Spanfellers reign include former A.V. 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. Enter Jim "Herb" Spanfeller. Jim has a different recollection of the facts, McAvoy reiterated. Its motivation is simply to publish true and interesting stories, and to make sure the things powerful people would rather stay in the dark end up in the light of day. 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. 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! 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. Mr. Spanfeller has a BA in English Literature from Union College, Schenectady, New York. Two are now successfully navigating careers in the digital advertising space. [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. Im shocked he would call that a good presentation, said the employee who was in the meeting. That union's collective bargaining agreement expires in February. Six days after the SVPs exchange with McAvoy, Spanfeller sent an email to the entire staff announcing G/O Medias new company values. Ive reached out to Spanfeller for comment multiple times over the past few days and have yet to hear back. (Spanfeller says this is inaccurate and that he did consider other candidates for the editorial director role, but Paul quickly rose to the top after he expressed an interest in the position.) Three of the men Spanfeller hired were installed over successful women who had been at the company for years. At least have everybody well briefed on this is what were doing and this is what wed like to learn from it, Reibstein said. 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. 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. pretty big scoop from me Jim Spanfeller is a herb https://t.co/gZDCs6mfhC. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. Political party affiliation trends based on location. The detection of possible errors in a person's voter record as well as instructions on how to update it. 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. In a follow-up meeting with Spanfeller about the story, she suggested that hard financial data might not be their audiences central interest. G/O Media, from a business perspective, has turned a corner, Spanfeller says. It is ridiculous to launch a management survey questioning the editorial value of the site. 4. After two years of mainly working from home, the company wants everyone back in the office four days a week. Asked about the meeting, Knight initially didnt answer. [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. Steve Thompson, 55, was installed over a female vice president who had been running west coast sales for two and a half years. Another former Daily Meal staffer said that management was straight-up scared of Spanfeller, adding, I can see why. Oberlander actually left last week. 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. 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.. 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. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. [5], In 1984, Spanfeller was named publisher of Newsweek On Campus magazine. , 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). 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. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? 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. "We closed Splinter because it was a liberal political site that was losing audience in the middle of a liberal moment," he said. Everyone can seeit on the pageor at least, everyone could see it before the censorship. The Daily Meal Founder G/O Media Chief Executive Officer Board and Advisor Roles Number of Current Board & Advisor Roles 3 Number of Past Board & Advisor Roles 2 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. [7], Spanfeller was named associate publisher and senior vice president of marketing of Playboy Enterprises in April 1989.
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Klondike Solitaire Turn 1, Articles J