Rich may not “feel like a scab” for taking a job running the new “Deadspin” after Petchesky’s firing and the resulting mass resignations, but he isn’t the only one who gets to make that determination. It seems difficult to believe that will suddenly change with a new figure in charge of “Deadspin.”Īnd that’s something else that’s important here. Their approach with Deadspin was to destroy the site’s non-sports coverage and its critical coverage of G/O Media, regardless of what that meant for its business. Remember that Spanfeller is named in two lawsuits alleging he mistreated female executives, and that his Deadspin strategy to this point appears to have been dictated by considerations well beyond “what works for traffic.” The not-sports pieces Spanfeller and Maidment complained about were some of the most-read on the site, and the mass resignations led to an 89 percent traffic drop from October to November. But there’s absolutely nothing to support that this will actually be at all similar to the old Deadspin approach, especially while G/O Media is run by CEO Jim Spanfeller. And he told Ben Mullin of The Wall Street Journal that that belief extends to critical coverage of G/O Media itself. He goes on to say “I won’t be shackled to straightforward sports journalism…What interests me is the issues that a lot of the bigger sports journalism places tip toe around - not much different than what Deadspin has always been and made it as good as it was,” and that he “was convinced that he would have the editorial freedom to pursue a wide range of stories” in talks with G/O leadership. Look, on one level, some of what Rich says here seems promising when it comes to him running a sports site. He said he not been in contact with any of the former Deadspin staffers, but was open to any of them returning to the site. I’m the farthest thing from a stick-to-sports sort of guy.”ĭeadspin’s headquarters will be moved from New York to Chicago with the relaunch of the site and Rich said he plans to hire a staff of around 20. I’m coming into this with the best intentions, with a record that I’m a champion of the best and highest forms of journalism.
That’s what a great site and publication does.
He added that he witnessed the unrest at Deadspin last year with both sadness and sympathy, but did not feel like a scab. “I know the obit has been written already and people feel like it’s dead but I want to change people’s minds.” “I don’t want to see Deadspin die,” Rich, 48, said in an interview Wednesday. Here are some of those, via Ben Strauss of The Washington Post: And his early comments run quite contrary to what’s actually happened with Deadspin. The G/O Media editorial director hire hasn’t been announced yet, but they have now announced that Rich will be presiding over the latest attempt to reanimate Deadspin’s corpse. Then in January, it was reported that they were planning to relaunch “Deadspin” in Chicago (under The Onion’s union rather than the GMG Union), potentially even under long-time Deadspin adversary Jim Brady (as a hire for G/O Media’s overall editorial director, a position vacant since Paul Maidment’s resignation (“to pursue an entrepreneurial opportunity”) after the first abortive attempt to revive Deadspin). After those resignations, they initially ran widely-ridiculed unbylined posts (plus one from a freelancer who took major backlash and quit less than an hour after his piece posted) for a week on “Deadspin” before giving up. This isn’t the first time G/O Media has tried to bring Deadspin back to life without its staff. Their latest attempt at that comes with the hire of former New York Daily News/Huffington Post editor Jim Rich as “Deadspin” editor-in-chief. But ownership group G/O Media (established by equity fund Great Hill Partners, which bought the former Gawker Media sites (including Deadspin), The Onion and its associated sites, and other sites from Univision last April) has refused to accept this and tried several times to reanimate the corpse. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible. Deadspin is dead, and has been since the entire staff resigned in October following t he firing of deputy editor Barry Petchesky for refusing corporate mandates to stick to sports (a demand contrary to Deadspin’s history and mission).
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