hey gawker dudes. what the fuck is wrong with you?

When pressed about diversity during a town hall meeting in April, Spanfeller allegedly said, “Haven’t thought about it, but I hear you guys. Obviously, diversity is important, I get it.”

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmj9ve/lawsuits-go-media-ceo-jim-spanfeller-fostered-hostile-work-environment-for-women

this thread put it better than I did, probably:

i think there has to be a way we can mourn the eroding of "rude press" that interrogates power, while also remembering that the people in power at those bastions of bravado and rudeness were often men who let stuff like eric sundermann and other shitty media men run unchecked

— jgz (@jennygzhang) November 8, 2019

specifically the "maybe the only difference now is that only the top dogs are allowed to be shitty to their subordinates" part

Someone linked to this David Roth interview on the politics thread, but I thought this was an important point about Spanfeller's intentions:

I don’t even think he’s a Republican. I think he’s like an As the father of daughters… type Dem. Initially when we were trying to see if we could still figure this shit out… We thought that they were mad about the Trump stories like getting booed at the World Series. Dan McQuade did a blog that night with the video and a few paragraphs and it did like 750,00 uniques. It was fine, it was perfectly amusing, it didn’t have any editorializing in it. Then I wrote the next day, it had a lot of editorializing, but I made sure to get World Series in the headline. They were like both of those are fine, it’s not a Trump thing. He doesn’t like Trump. The stuff that made him mad were silly posts. I think the idea was if you want us to sell this to advertisers they want to know they can go look at the front page of the site and they’d understand it and get why it’s sports.

Even Barry Petschesky's NYT op-ed took this righteous, high-minded "Sports is about more than just the game" angle, and I'm not sure that Spanfeller and Maidment actually objected to that? They just didn't get the idea that the site had a ~personality~ that was a huge basis for the audience it attracted.

More:

I think some of it too was the types of sites that he wants, and the extent I’m able to figure out any business justification for what he did is this: It’s that he is not a reader. He doesn’t have a very advanced idea of why people would read websites. What he’s trying to do is get these mushy, normal, middle websites. And you’re allowed to write them as well as you want. He’s not mad if you do a good job on a blog post. But he doesn’t care if you do a good one either. You just have to stick within that. He’s trying to sell this stuff to advertisers that he imagines that are even more conservative than him. So with politics I guess a Splinter headline that’s really sharp-edged or any of the stuff that he would actually see, because I really don’t think he read any stories on any sites -- if he saw that he was like you’re fucking it up because the people I’m trying to sell ads to are like banks or insurance companies. If you have a post that’s like health insurance is a fucking racket and it should be Medicare for All immediately, then in his mind, and this is the closest I can come to figuring it out, he’s like well how am I going to sell that to Etna?

i think that any venture capital owner who doesn't get the spirit or purpose of a thing they own (which is to say all of them) is perfectly capable of literally meaning they want the writers to stick to sports, literally.

I guess that's true, but I feel like the perspective it's coming from is this dumb, weak "Let's just make this easier for all of us."

i get what yr getting at but he has a bunch of ideas in there re: management that make me think he's working thru it still/is still too close to it.

there's the "make life easier by not doing dorky posts about cats,"

there's the literal "stick to sports you chuds,"

there's "stick to sports so we can monetize you for the algorithm better you chuds"

there's the "BECAUSE I SAID SO" angle that Greenwell showed in her exit piece & everyone else kinds of hints at

there's the fact that they are big stupid venture capital shitlords who never deserve the benefit of the doubt

If I wan't invested in GMG or the people who write for it I would always assume some combination of the last three, probably in reverse order, before i assumed there was any grey area in "stick to sports"

the intersection of sports and culture at large was 100% their brand. Deadspin didn't really care much about the actual analysis of sports, like why is this particular offensive formation suddenly very popular or how does this college prospect's game translate to the pro level. The Ringer and ESPN among others are much better at that. but every day basically there's some sports story that crosses over into larger issues of race, gender, class, etc. and that was Deadspin's bread and butter. I would've loved to see what they had to say about the response to the Myles Garrett-Mason Rudolph brawl last night, for instance.

Deadspin dot com had 2.2m unique visitors in November, according to Comscore. It had 19.9m unique visitors in October, its best month in at least 3 years. Looks like the “force all your employees to resign” strategy is going swimmingly.

— Kevin Draper (@kevinmdraper) December 17, 2019

News: G/O Media is moving Deadspin to Chicago and suspending negotiations with unionized employees. Here's the letter from Jim Spanfeller. pic.twitter.com/x3ymCOCbmI

— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) January 10, 2020

from the replies

https://www.theonion.com/im-moving-this-miserable-periodical-to-the-yukon-1819584756

are you gawker dudes familiar with The Small Bow?
http://thesmallbow.com/

“The steps are in order for a reason,” is a particular refrain among 12-Step devotees, specifically for selfish scaredy cats like me who cannot see how unnecessary amends could cause more pain for someone else. I didn’t send a mass email, but I forged ahead on a few sloppy attempts at undercooked apologies. Believe me, it’s better to wait.

While I wait, I keep updating my amends list each year which is filled with the usual people who suffered because of me: ex-girlfriends who deserved truth and compassion but got emotional abuse; ex-employees who I betrayed; company investors who got burned; a sister who sensed my absence; parents who did the best they could.

Then there’s another list a little more unique: work-related hazards and hurts tied to my years of vicious, contemptible blogging at Gawker Media for many of their sites. Both of my sponsors have suggested most of this list falls under the “living amends” guidelines–where the only thing to be done that isn’t harmful to myself or them is to write out an imaginary letter to the Universe or offer up a thoughtful prayer. The real amend, both sponsors said, is that I leave them alone now and forever. I must still be accountable, this is simply an added level of consideration for myself and others. It’s important to be ready though, just in case.

i posted about it a couple of months ago

ah, okay; my bad. that's probably why i know about it!

if you liked Deadspin theres sort of a version of it here

https://unnamedtemporarysportsblog.com

the "about" page mentions they're all still unemployed. is that true?

kind of bleak

wow

Comedy Website ClickHole to Become Independent and Employee-Owned in Partnership with Cards Against Humanity

FEBRUARY 3RD, 2020 (CHICAGO) — Cards Against Humanity has purchased the comedy website ClickHole from G/O Media and reincorporated it as an independent, majority employee-owned company. The deal closed Tuesday February 3rd.

The Clickhole staff will own a substantial majority stake in the company, and Cards Against Humanity will own a minority stake. The purchase price has not been disclosed. The entire staff will move over.

“We are thrilled that Cards Against Humanity has made the very ill-advised financial decision to give us the funding we need to buy business supplies, such as staplers and TI-83 graphing calculators,” ClickHole said. “They are giving us the rare opportunity to work with total creative freedom and to run our business with zero oversight, which will undoubtedly result in us bankrupting our company. This can only end in disaster.”

“ClickHole is probably the funniest thing we’re aware of,” Cards Against Humanity community manager Jenn Bane said. “We have been huge fans of the site since it launched, and everyone in our company can recite at least a few ClickHole articles from memory”

With the acquisition comes ClickHole’s content archive, dating back to its founding in 2014. The Onion created the site at the same time it decided to stop its print edition and focus on web content. The site parodies social media and viral content on sites like Buzzfeed and Upworthy.

“ClickHole is a big honking comedy website whose main goal is to create the funniest things possible,” ClickHole continued. “We believe in experimenting and trying new things in order to produce a unique type of content that you can’t find anywhere else, even on TV or at the opera. Our goal is to be more funny than the animals at the zoo, and if we can do that, we believe we can become the most powerful website in the world. We are also the only website in the world with Treasure, and we guard it jealously. It is our deeply held belief that protecting our Treasure is the key to creating a successful website.”

Cards Against Humanity and ClickHole will continue to operate as separate businesses. Cards Against Humanity will not play a role in day-to-day management of the site; however, the game company will supply ClickHole with cash to support operations.

“ClickHole has accumulated this once-in-a-generation team of comedy talent,” Cards co-creator Max Temkin said. “We’re not going to tell them how to run their business. Our goal is just to give them every creative tool that we have.”

The current ClickHole website is temporary, and the staff plans to relaunch the site and its story archive on a new platform.

“We are grateful that CAH is giving us the support we need to continue being the only website on the entire internet with Treasure,” ClickHole said. “ClickHole’s Treasure consists of gold, rubies, doubloons, diamonds, sapphires, and many other beautiful gems and precious metals. Nobody is allowed to touch our Treasure, but people are allowed to look at our Treasure. If you try to steal our Treasure, we will put a curse on you. Thank you for your cooperation. Long live ClickHole.”

“We don’t want to be a publisher and we’re not really thinking of this as an investment with a huge return,” Temkin said. “We just want ClickHole to be around for 100 years.”

About Cards Against Humanity

Cards Against Humanity is an independent game company based in Chicago. It is the best-reviewed, top-selling, and most-wished-for toy or game on Amazon.com. Today the company operates a coworking space for more than 100 independent artists in Chicago (named one of the Chicago’s coolest offices by Crain’s); a scholarship for women seeking college degrees in science; and a political super-PAC. They also own a private island in a lake in Maine which was purchased for comedic purposes. The Chicago Sun-Times said their business has “the sophistication of a lemonade stand.”

About ClickHole

ClickHole is a satirical publication that regularly breaks the internet with its incredible, life-changing viral content. Launched by The Onion in 2014, the site has amassed millions of loyal readers and has been hailed in the press as “literally the best website,” “the institutional voice of the internet,” and “the weirdest—and funniest—place on the internet.” ClickHole's five-person staff includes editor-in-chief Steve Etheridge, head writer Adam Levine, associate editor Jewel Galbraith, staff writer Jessye McGarry, and writer-at-large Jacy Catlin.

Does anyone know where I can find that "the worst person you know just made a good point" jpg?

funny you should ask https://lifestyle.clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-know-just-made-a-gr-1825121606

lol

I can't tell whether this is still satire or not

weren't there rape accusations against max temkin

Yeah

Well one

I’m genuinely tickled that rather than write job descriptions for the new and improved Deadspin, they copied and pasted the ones I wrote as part of the vision of the site they despised. https://t.co/XiWdDWe1D1 https://t.co/4XRwRIjFPc

— Megan Greenwell (@megreenwell) February 7, 2020

https://www.thecut.com/2020/02/emily-gould-gawker-shame.html

Gould was the editor of Gawker back when I was actually reading it every day (and working at a NY paper so its content mostly about NY media insider stuff felt relevant to my interests) and ive always enjoyed her writing. I still don’t think she’s owning what gawker was about or her role in it - she’s a victim of Denton of kimmel of trump or strangers shaming her but gawker was about shaming ppl then and up until the end and sometimes its writers got blowback for the bad stuff they wrote and published.

I thought that was a good essay.

Zombie Deadspin going with blood libel. Yikes.

You would think - call me crazy here -- that there is a way to say mean things about this NHL owner who just laid a bunch of people off without employing vicious and well-known anti-Semitic tropes pic.twitter.com/i6K4Z78YPw

— Anna Merlan (@annamerlan) March 26, 2020

The guy in charge of getting Best Buy to purchase native ads didn't go into your Kinja and yank the marvelous muckraking journalism about how a media company CFO was trying to get his dick wet with poo.

deadspin has successfully used Talent Distancing to flatten the Traffic Curve pic.twitter.com/Vbt1pWcaqH

— Patrick Cosmos (@veryimportant) April 9, 2020

Was at 1672 in September

The sister sites all seem to be gradually bleeding talent as well. There’s only like 3 left at Jalopnik that were around before the Deadspin mass resignation

yeah. kotaku is pretty bad these days too. the top article for the last 3 days is one that features a bunch of cleavage in the banner pic. i feel like i'm reading the daily mail or something

I'd like to use this opportunity to laugh at spanfeller but I'm pretty sure losing all the good writers is part of the broader forbesification plan

re: kotaku
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/04/16/jason-schreier-is-leaving-kotaku-citing-go-media-reason/

“I’ve been through a lot with this company,” Schreier told the Post. “It always felt like, through it all, we were guided by people who always cared about journalism, and unfortunately, I’m not sure that’s the case a

It’s one of the hardest, saddest decisions I’ve ever had to make. But after over three years as its editor in chief, I’ll be leaving @gizmodo this month.

— kelly bourdet (@kellybourdet) April 15, 2020

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-deadspin-writers-reunite-once-again-this-time-sponsored-by-a-weed-company

Nice

That Emily Gould piece from February is fantastic.

yeah, wow

coming soon to a screen near you, apparently co-penned by ex-ilxor
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/gawker-is-undead-once-more-as-a-planned-apple-tv-series

Who will they get to play Drew Magary?

wow

Just sayin' pic.twitter.com/Mvon3J4NDA

— John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) April 13, 2018

lol. can't wait till my screenplay for "ilx the musical" gets picked up.

Is this why Max deleted his Twitter account?

we should all delete our twitter accounts, don't need a reason really

Over/under on the box office of a Gawker movie: $275