jim spanfeller political affiliation

It also wasnt communicated to me as a promotion until the day it was emailed out to the company.. Which he would do by turning Deadspin into a sports-only website. It wasnt collaborative.. Spanfellers executive assistant set up a time for us to meet. But Spanfellers expectation that the process would be done in the next week or so shocked the tech team. 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. "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. "We want to do it in a way that's a little more buttoned up," he said. Now that we are closer to stabilizing the company, there can be a more deliberate recruitment and hiring process. I never changed my mind. I was also hiring a good portion of these jobs before I actually took over day to day control of the company. 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. 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. I was unclear about what she did. 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. Spanfeller said he did not recall the specific request. Never mind the flood of negative stories about staff blowback over the company's editorial direction. 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. The next day she refused to join me in communicating our plans to Susie. "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. [10] Spanfeller was also responsible for advertising sales on the magazine's website and that of Yahoo! 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. Vice president of sales for the south Lance Johnson, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes (and most recently worked with Bruce Rogers at a company called SITO Mobile). So Out of Touch: Gen Z Congressman-Elect Mocks RNC Tweet Criticizing Him For His Housing Woes. 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). A source said Spanfeller told editors-in-chief of the companys websites that he had chosen Maidment, 68, for the job before the sale was completed and did not interview other candidates, including Banikarim. Six of these hires were Spanfellers colleagues from his previous jobs at Forbes, Playboy, and Ziff Davis. McAvoy told her she would be able to interview for a bigger role, she said, only to follow up a few weeks later and say that Rogers had been hired. Clubs executive editor and managing editor, respectively, stepped down on July 12. In an email read to Deadspin, McAvoy agreed that she was qualified for the role and said he would talk with Spanfeller to ensure she was interviewed for the new opportunity, which had not been posted publicly. Spanfeller declined to answer a question about whether he expressed these sentiments to Klancnik. 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. 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? 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. It laid off 14 staffers in the summer of 2020. 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. 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. The sales employee (who is not an SVP) wasnt surprised to hear that Spanfeller didnt know what she did. "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. [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. 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. G/O Media, from a business perspective, has turned a corner, Spanfeller says. During those meetings, Maidments ideaswhich included commissioning an editor outside the company to review and approve stories written by about the companywere met with unanimous opposition. Oberlander actually left last week. When confronted with this negative feedback, Spanfeller insisted that he cannot be sexist because he has daughters. 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. 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.. Amid the chaos, someone edited Spanfeller's Wikipedia entry to read, "Jim Spanfeller is a fart-faced fascist best known for running Forbes.com from 2001-2009." (That language has since . Stay up to date with what you want to know. 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. At the time of publication, Carmichaels original tweet has been retweeted more than 300 times. 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.. He sits on the Board of Directors of The New York Chapter of The National Foundation for Teaching . The other is still in college., Four of nine major hires have been women, Spanfeller said. And Fake. Its everything Ive wanted and more.. That is clearly evident when you note the poor syntax and galling bias of the questions. 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. We sent a request for an explanation and did not receive a response. A longtime digital media veteran, Spanfeller was an unconventional choice to lead the new Gizmodo Media Group sites (The Daily Beast's CEO, Heather Dietrick, once served as president of the . 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. 2. Where people are registered to vote. Unlike private equity investors who financially engineer acquisitions, burdening companies they buy with debt and massive . He said the company was just profitable before the pandemic hit its business, and is now comfortably back in the black. Or knowledgeable writers?, Asked about the survey, Rogers said he thinks its responses will accurately and fully reflect Deadspin readers opinions of the site. 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. He would stop into peoples offices with the doors open and scream at them, so everyone knew what was going on., 5. At the same time we are still exploring all options to get this work done by August 15th.. When she tried to edit the post, she was greeted by the following image: Attempts to create a new post were similarly thwarted. I hired Katie who accepted the job, he wrote. 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. G/O Media executives have discussed potential deal targets in the past, including Genius, The Hill, and HuffPost, according to two people familiar with the matter. 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. That management did not respond to our request for an explanation is only another of the many ways the workers at GMG have been ignored and put on the back burner in the name of a profitability mirage that is clearly more attractive to the big decision-makers than a functioning workplace. Im shocked he would call that a good presentation, said the employee who was in the meeting. The person hired was Bruce Rogers, who most recently ran the institute arm of SITO Mobile, a mobile data company. 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. Use this information as you see fit. That is absurd. When Spanfeller Offered to Promote a Woman to a Top Position, He Insisted She Fire a Female Editorial Director Should She Accept the Job. 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. 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 . [12][13], In 2011, Spanfeller launched The Daily Meal with an estimated $2 million investment. [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". 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. 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. The other is still in college.. Computing. Nearly two dozen current G/O Media employees spoke to Deadspin for this story. In other words, G/O media had effectively broken the redirect at Deadspin2.com, so that the site now redirected to a dead link. Six days after the SVPs exchange with McAvoy, Spanfeller sent an email to the entire staff announcing G/O Medias new company values. On July 9, he hired Faiza Javaid as deputy general counsel, a position that was posted publicly. 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,. It was four days old. 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. G/O Media, owner of Gizmodo and The Onion, will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, CEO Jim Spanfeller says. He previously served as President & Chief Executive Officer of Forbes.com, a leading media Internet company, and as Executive Vice President . Views. The key journalistic properties descended from . James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American media executive best known for running Forbes.com from 20012009. 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. Great Hill Partners is a growth equity company committed to building businesses. Laura M. Browning and Caitlin PenzeyMoog, the A.V. In 1964, Spanfeller recieved the title of Artist of the Year from the Artists Guild of New York. Spanfeller said the company hopes to expand into areas like travel, music, business, and news. Spanfellers cronies now fill the G/O Media positions of chief financial officer, editorial director, senior VP of marketing, VP of west coast sales, VP of east coast sales, and VP of southern sales. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? We shall have a discussion on the policy at the next EiCs leads meeting. A voter's representatives in government. 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. These vacant roles have yet to be filled and Spanfeller has not announced an interim editor. No one has been named interim editor, and there is no succession plan in place. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. It will post an eight-figure operating profit this year, he told Insider, and hunt for acquisitions in 2022. 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. Who even told you you were allowed to think about audience? the woman alleged. 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. While these high-ranking women were being overlooked and bypassed, Spanfeller evidently was concerned about retaining at least one other VP on the sales side. []. Throughout his career he has recieved more than 60 awards for his work from such . 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. In the meantime, Carmichael had her own message for Spanfeller: Congratulations on confirming your herb-ishness.. 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! [4] He soon switched to the business side of the paper, and later took a tour through Europe. Spanfeller admitted he contacted Maidment in June after receiving my initial email requesting an interview. 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. 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 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. 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.. pretty big scoop from me Jim Spanfeller is a herb https://t.co/gZDCs6mfhC. It definitely feels like its the old boys club, a G/O Media employee told Deadspin. In one instance in which Spanfeller tried to promote a woman within the company, his offer came with strings attached. 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. Jim Justice speaks during President Donald Trump's political rally inside the Big Sandy Superstore Arena in Huntington on Thursday. The survey on Deadspin, however, had some serious issues, he said. It became clear that she was not a good fit for this position and we both agreed on this. Lastly, I firmly believe, personally, that Jim Spanfeller is a herb. Meanwhile, many people who are still at the company feel their work is being hindered by new management. Follow him on Twitter here: @calebecarma. Former SVP of sales and operations Kurt Mueller had left the company, and McAvoy told the woman Spanfeller was hiring his replacement. In the months that followed, without posting the jobs publicly, Spanfeller, 62, hired a stable of white men to fill executive positions overseeing nearly every facet of the company. I Close-Read the 113-Page Complaint Trying to Ban the Abortion Pill in Texas. 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. This sites credibility is not dependent on who and what it reports on, but on its ability to report forcefully and accurately. Vacillating Wildly From Dispiriting to Exhilarating. I have communicated our timeline concerns to Jim and he understands that development is not an exact science and that goals may not be hit, Knight told Deadspin. Ive reached out to Spanfeller for comment multiple times over the past few days and have yet to hear back. 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. Ad revenue rebounded, Spanfeller told Insider last year. 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. (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.) 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. Text. 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. All rights reserved. (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. John Taggart for The Washington Post / Getty Images. 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 . She told Deadspin she was surprised that Spanfeller seemed to know little about her team, which last year won Digidays best content studio award.. Justice announced he was switching his party affiliation . In addition to the annoying ads, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller also wants Kotaku to only write about video games. 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. 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. The differences were as granular as whether to call published pieces "blogs" or "stories." Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. Jim Rich, the former Daily News editor charged with bringing Deadspin back to life following a mass staff exodus, has resigned after just 18 months on the job, The Post has learned. 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 We had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, Spanfeller wrote in a statement. Political affiliation means the state of belonging to or endorsing any political party. While we were given a 3pm deadline today to respond to dozens of questions, I understand that the folks at Deadspin have already submitted their story for legal review and plan to publish it on Wednesday all without ever seeing any of the responses to the questions that they asked. It has introduced real uncertainty in to stocks, and Trump's agenda has become shaky. New York City. In the midst of the fallout, former Deadspin, Gawker, and Jezebel editor Emma Carmichael had a spirited discussion with [former Jezebel writer] Clio Chang on the overwhelming herbishness of Jim Spanfeller, she told me over the phone. Im kind of a tipsy at a bar in Paris, she added. Multiple sources say Pontius declined to go along with the plan, angering Spanfeller. But after the staff meeting, sources say, members of the tech team held a meeting with Knight to explain why the date was unrealistic. Sign up for notifications from Insider! 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. 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. 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. This is normal in situations like these where a new group is coming in and is facing a near term challenge.. . Jim characterized that as a misunderstanding, she said. Another former Daily Meal staffer said that management was straight-up scared of Spanfeller, adding, I can see why. But those efforts did not go very far, the people said, and the company has yet to mount a takeover. The anger stems from Spanfellers apparent disregard for his own stated company values, which include a commitment to diversity and inclusion. I read that she's a registered Republican in Texas. 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 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. View details on more than 95 Million registered voters across the United States. Steve Riley on February 14, 2013: Just right off the bat. Asked for a response to the latter allegation, Spanfeller responded, That is absurd. Internet Life, a joint publication of Ziff-Davis and Yahoo!. View Jim Spanfeller's professional profile on LinkedIn. 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. [14] A subsequent Deadspin post mocked Spanfeller as a "herb"; after being widely shared on social media, G/O Media removed the post. 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 am a father of three wonderful woman. [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. 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.". 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. No media company does. 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. Or to keep it anonymous, click here. [2][3], Spanfeller graduated from Union College with a B.A. As you know, one reason that I dont believe that publications should write about themselves is because I fear it damages perceived external credibility in editorial independence, which, if anything, makes keeping advertisers at bay harder, not easier. Senior vice president of marketing Bruce Rogers, who worked with Spanfeller at Forbes. At the same time, working with the EICs to set a general editorial direction is clearly in the purview of any owner.). , 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). 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. 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. He started screaming at me, Who told you you were allowed to speak about audience? Gaffney said the firm was prepared to hold onto the investment for a decade or more and that Spanfeller, a former Forbes and Playboy executive, does not have a time frame for preparing the company for a sale. Initially, we had to move fast because the company was losing money at a rapid pace, he said. 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. They cant even pitch effectively, said another employee who was present. Everyone can seeit on the pageor at least, everyone could see it before the censorship. 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. I had experience and confidence in the people who were hired. Jim Spanfeller the beleaguered boss of G/O Media, which owns The Onion and Deadspin is being sued by two former executives who claim in separate lawsuits that he discriminated against . 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. I told him I had a few questions Id like to ask him, and asked if he had any availability for a meeting the following day. Have a tip we should know? Asked about the former employees accounts, Spanfeller said he has no idea what this refers to and it is not my recollection of working at The Daily Meal, adding that he doesnt recall screaming at anyone. In his email to the staff, Spanfeller described this story as one that had been commissioned by the site, and attempted to paint the reporting process behind it as haphazard and unfair.

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