It also said employees will be barred from using encrypted email programs, and have to follow dress and attendance codes. Per Tani, it said that G/O Media has the right to search staffers’ “vehicles, parcels, purses, handbags, backpacks, briefcases, and lunch boxes,” and review and disclose all electronic communications sent on G/O property, including tweets. On Thursday, employees received a draft of a new staff handbook. Wagner asked Maidment to confirm his age Maidment replied, “I don’t indulge in ageism and hope you don’t either.” Those former colleagues, Wagner reported, included “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.” Prior to publication, Spanfeller emailed G/O staff to say he would allow the piece to run following an “external review,” and to express concerns about “the objectivity and core intentions of the piece.” He circulated Wagner’s questions to executives, along with their answers that was the first time Wagner saw the responses of Paul Maidment, G/O Media’s editorial director. Spanfeller, Wagner wrote, hired male former colleagues into executive roles over the heads of senior females who were already at the company and without a public process. So it was no surprise when Laura Wagner, one of the reporters on the Univision story, published a piece about her new bosses. G/O Media sites have a proud history of aggressive coverage of themselves-see the “Univision Is A Fucking Mess” story. To top things off, staffers found roaches in G/O Media’s new Times Square offices. (The editor of Kotaku said he shut down the idea, and that Spanfeller didn’t push it.) Management has stuffed articles with programmatic ads and encouraged editors to push clickbaity tricks to juice traffic on the cost side, several G/O sites cut pay rates for freelancers, and bosses discouraged editors from handing out raises, Tani reports. Per Tani, Spanfeller suggested that G/O sites including Jalopnik, which covers cars, and Kotaku, which covers video games, should allow advertiser interests to shape coverage. Last month, G/O Media staffers told The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani that Spanfeller was taking the company in an “insane” direction. Amid a “restructuring,” 25 staffers lost their jobs they mostly worked on the business side, but their number included Susie Banikarim, the sites’ “widely respected” editorial director, and senior editors Alex Dickinson and Tim Marchman. The writing was on the wall before April was out. ICYMI: NPR parts ways with freelancer after Tucker Carlson targets her On Friday, Megan Greenwell, Deadspin’s top editor, announced that she will join them, citing “months of being undermined” by bosses. Since the Great Hill takeover, several senior staffers have quit the company. A string of stories-from outlets outside and inside the G/O Media fold-paint a picture of worsening relations between the business side and the editorial side, with the latter’s independence repeatedly called into question. Four months later, eyebrows have achieved escape velocity. In an early memo to staff, Spanfeller called editorial independence “critically important,” but added, “there needs to be a healthy and productive partnership with the business side.” At the time, eyebrows rose. Private-equity involvement in journalism, however, always raises concerns. The mood in the affected newsrooms seemed to be one of cautious optimism Great Hill, staffers hoped, would be an improvement on Univision, the sites’ debt-saddled former owner, which Gizmodo Media Group reporters last year termed “a fucking mess.” Great Hill suggested it would honor an existing union contract, and would not make significant layoffs. The company, renamed G/O Media, installed Jim Spanfeller, formerly of, Playboy, and Ziff Davis, as CEO.
In early April, Great Hill Partners, a private-equity firm, acquired Gizmodo Media Group-a collection of sites, formed from the assets of the old Gawker, that included Jezebel, Lifehacker, and Deadspin-as well as The Onion, a satirical news site, reportedly at a fire-sale price.
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