Sports blogging site Deadspin has been sold to a European publisher and its entire staff was reportedly let go with little notice on Monday. It came just months after the publisher was forced to apologize after a young Kansas City Chiefs fan accused him of doing “blackface.”
Jim Spanfeller, CEO of parent company G/O Media, announced news of the sale and layoffs in a memo to staff as the media company sells another site in its crumbling empire. announced.
“Recently, we were contacted by Lineup Publishing, a European company, expressing interest in acquiring Deadspin to add to its growing media holdings,” Spanfeller said. “Lineup Publishing is a young digital media company that, in their words, is ‘dedicated to creating, acquiring and managing high-quality media brands across a variety of sectors.'”
Lineup Publishing “will not be replacing the site’s existing staff, but will instead build a new team more aligned with the brand’s editorial vision,” the CEO added. “While the new owners intend to honor Deadpin’s unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach when it comes to the site’s general sports coverage. Unfortunately, this means parting ways with affected staff. It means.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
A Deadspin representative said 11 staff members were affected.
In his memo, Spanfeller emphasized that he was not shopping on a sports site when the offer came.
Daily Mail reported Deadspin writers and editors were notified of their job losses in just 30 minutes before being locked out of their company laptops, they said, citing personal posts on X from senior editors. Julie DiCaro.
The sports site’s staff was based in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Deadspin, which has been owned by G/O since 2019, was sued last month by the family of a 9-year-old Kansas City Chiefs fan who was accused by the site of using “blackface” in an article. It made headlines. It was written last November.
Holden Armenta’s parents, Shannon and Raul, claimed that Deadspin intentionally published defamatory articles and subjected their family to a “barrage of hate, including death threats.”
Deadspin amended the article amid a storm of criticism and added an editor’s note calling the publication “regretful.”[s] There was no suggestion that we were attacking,” Armenta said.
The family filed a defamation lawsuit seeking unspecified damages. It’s still swirling around the courts.
Despite Spanfeller’s suggestion, Axios in January G/O Media, owner of Gizmodo, AV Club, and The Onion, wasn’t selling it. Recent reports from AdWeek It was suggested that certain titles were blocked.
“We are not strapped for cash,” Spanfeller told Axios at the time. But he added that private equity firms tend to have a “use-by date” of around six to 10 years. “So we’re thinking about that,” he said.
In November, G/O shut down its women’s website Jezebel and laid off the site’s staff. Later that month, Paste Magazine acquired her Jezebel.com from her G/O.
The company has been reducing the load on the field and gradually reducing headcount over the past year as it streamlines its focus to increase efficiency.
G/O also sold lifestyle website Lifehacker to Ziff Davis last March and laid off 13 staffers last June.
