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UPDATE: Sports News and Commentary Deadspin has been sold again and fully terminated.
Deadspin, once owned by Gawker Media, became part of private-equity backed G/O Media in 2019. In a memo to company staff Monday, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced that Deadspin was sold to European firm Lineup Publishing.
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With the sale, the 11-person Deadspin team suffered a setback. “The new owners of Deadspin have made the decision not to move the existing site and to build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand,” Spanfeller wrote in the note. Although the new owners plan to be respectful of Deadpin’s unique voice, they plan to adopt another content technique for the site’s overall sports coverage. Unfortunately, this means that we will part ways with the tactics of the affected members, who were informed. today.
Last fall, G/O Media shut down Jezebel and its staff was laid off after a failed attempt to sell the site. Jezebel was later acquired through Atlanta-based Paste Magazine. In March 2023, G/O Media sold the convenient Lifehacker site to Ziff. Davis.
G/O Media’s existing portfolio is Gizmodo, The Onion, The A. V. Club, Jalopnik, Kotaku, La Racine and Quartz.
The sale of Deadspin comes after the site in November 2023 published an opinion piece with a headline that originally said, “The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress.” The story included a photo of a 9-year-old Chiefs fan at an NFL game wearing face paint; however, other photos of the child from the game showed that his face was painted half black and half red. In addition, the family has said the child is of Native American descent. In February 2024, the child’s family filed a defamation lawsuit against G/O Media seeking unspecified damages; the case remains pending. An editor’s note appended to the Deadspin story reads in part, “We regret any suggestion that we were attacking the fan or his family. To that end, our story was updated on Dec. 7 to remove any photos, tweets, links, or otherwise identifying information about the fan. We have also revised the headline to better reflect the substance of the story.”
The controversy over the Deadspin article “frustrated” Great Hill Partners, the private-equity firm that owns G/O Media, and “may have helped hasten” the sale of the site, according to a report by Adweek citing anonymous sources. G/O Media declined to comment. Spanfeller, in his memo to staffers Monday, said the offer to buy Deadspin was unsolicited: “I do want to make it clear that we were not actively shopping Deadspin,” he wrote.
WGA East-affiliated union Onion Inc, which represents some Deadspin workers, said in a statement Monday: “Today, all Deadspin staff were laid off when the Deadspin call was sold to another owner. These layoffs have become too much, not unusual for this company and our industry as a whole. That’s why we fought for compensation in our last contract, but the staff at Deadspin deserve so much more than that.
According to Spanfeller’s note, Lineup Publishing “is a new virtual media company, described in its own words as ‘dedicated to the creation, acquisition and control of high-quality media brands in a variety of industries. ‘ Array » Spanfeller added : “The reason for the decision to sell included a number of important factors, including the buyer’s editorial plans for the brand, the difficulty in the sports journalism industry and a valuation that reflected a generous premium compared to our initial acquisition value for the site. He did not disclose the cost of the deal with Deadspin.
The only information on Lineup Publishing’s website is a slogan that says “Engaging brands. With heaps of character” alongside a contact form. A G/O Media rep referred inquiries to Lineup Publishing.
Lineup Publisher is founded in St. Gwann, Malta, in the island country located in the Mediterranean Sea, according to an email from Timothy Booker, who knew himself as the company’s chief operating officer. “Lineup Publishing was founded through an organization of sports enthusiasts who sought to create the kind of sports news and observations that other people love to read,” Booker wrote in the email to Variety. “Deadspin is the first in the portfolio, but we are actively looking to win and build high-quality media brands across a variety of industries. Booker declined to identify the founding partners or owners of Lineup.
In 2019, Spanfeller and personal justice firm Great Hill Partners acquired Gizmodo Media Group (a sleek component of Gawker Media) and Univision’s The Onion to shape G/O Media.
That same year, Deadspin’s previous staff resigned en masse in protest of the new management’s demand that staffers write only about sports. Spanfeller then hired Jim Rich, former editor in chief of the New York Daily News, to run Deadspin. Rich was promoted to editorial director of G/O Media before he exited in mid-2021 over his reported objection to “interference” by Spanfeller and other top company execs. In July 2023, Rich rejoined the company as Deadspin’s EIC.
G/O Media “always actively reviews our portfolio and operations to ensure we prioritize resources to most productively meet the desires of our readers and advertisers,” Spanfeller wrote in the March 11 memo to employees. “While we are seeing some improvements this year on the advertising front, and I am cautiously confident that this will continue, we are mindful of the need to focus on the core sites where we can thrive most productively in the existing media business environment and in the long term. ” . »
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