7/12/2023 0 Comments Send a story tip to gawker media![]() ![]() I asked if the Editor-in-Chief would be up for meeting with senior executives at Lexus and suggested that we would have a sales person there, not to sell but simply to be an observer, and the EIC was fine with that.”Īfter the publication of this piece, Kotaku’s editor-in-chief, Stephen Totilo, posted a series of tweets saying that on one occasion, Spanfeller proposed that he bring a sales a sales representative to an interview, but that he shut down the idea. “I asked to see the coverage, and I determined that it was fair to positive. “The sales team raised a concern around editorial coverage about Lexus at Jalopnik,” he said. Asked about the Kotaku and Jalopnik incidents, Spanfeller said the practice was common in media. Spanfeller responded at length in an email to The Daily Beast. "Remember that a man with house slippers and no plan bought a company for more than 50 million dollars," another employee joked in private Slack messages reviewed by The Daily Beast, sent after Spanfeller’s first all-hands meeting. “Spanfeller’s management style appears to be making insane proclamations divorced from any reality and leaving his handpicked crew of yes men from Forbes to attempt to execute them while the rest of the staff explains why they’re not possible and goes about its normal work,” said one staffer. On a separate occasion, sources said, the new CEO suggested that reporters and editors at Kotaku-once a Gawker-owned gaming website-bring a sales representative to interviews with gaming executives. Two people with knowledge told The Daily Beast that in a private meeting, Spanfeller reviewed the coverage of Lexus with the editor-in-chief of Jalopnik, a car-focused website, to ensure that its stories did not discourage the luxury automaker from advertising with G/O sites. According to sources inside the company, he has pushed the sites to allow relationships with advertisers to shape their coverage. Spanfeller has largely delegated editorial tasks to a deputy, but in his limited interactions with top editorial staff, he’s made a number of suggestions that have raised eyebrows.Īs the new chief of G/O Media, Spanfeller has seemingly attempted to diverge from the old Gawker ways of doing business. Several of those moves have angered high-level staffers at the company.Įarlier this year, investment firm Great Hill partners purchased G/O Media, the company known as Gizmodo Media Group and Gawker Media, and installed former Forbes executive Jim Spanfeller as the company’s CEO. took over the websites formerly known as Gawker Media, the new leadership has made a series of moves that are at odds with the company’s famously freewheeling corporate culture. Since newly created company G/O Media Inc. Publicly remarking about ethnic stereotypes. Asking for sites to quadruple their traffic-with no new resources. Leaning on editors to be nice to advertisers. ![]()
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