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Deadspin editor quits, blasts G/O management

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Regan MacNeil, Aug 16, 2019.

Page 14 of 60
  1. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    You fondle my trigger then you blame my gun?

    Not sure there's a connection between Deadspin loading Chekhov's gun and someone else using an entirely different gun to commit murder.
     
    Songbird, Oct 31, 2019
    #157
  2. Double Down

    Double Down Well-Known Member

    Of course there is. If they never run the Hogan video, Nick Denton still owns/run Gawker media because he doesn’t have to sell it to cover the damages awarded to Hogan in the civil suit, and no one ever is asked to “stick to sports.”
     
    Double Down, Oct 31, 2019
    #158
  3. The Big Ragu

    The Big Ragu Moderator Staff Member

    The world isn't a black and white narrative.

    By all accounts, Univision gave away the former Gizmondo sites because they were losing money. They were wlling to eat a great deal of the $135 million they had paid, lick their wounds and move on because they felt they had made a bad investment.

    So this couldn't have been a great business before a private equity firm tried to bottom feed.

    It's true that private equity firms sometimes bite off more than they can chew, in terms of getting into businesses they don't understand. But it's not like this was likely an area swimming along making money until a private equity firm came in and destroyed it, which as satisfying a narrative as that makes for some people, is never quite the reality. They stepped into a tough business in a particularly tough business environment, when things were starting to decelerate. They likely bought cheap enough so that they weren't risking losing anything near what Univision did, which may make them smarter than people realize.

    The number of media layoffs this year well exceeds the aggregate number from 2014 to 2017.
    7,200 people have lost their jobs so far this year in a media landslide

    That is never indicative of a particularly good business environment.

    One chestnut in the private equity playbook is to buy slow or barely growing businesses that throw off cash, and then use that cash to collect a dividend. That was likely the plan here, but when they found out that it was getting increasingly harder to generate cash in the business they got into, they did what investors in media properties have done since the beginning of time. ... and the edicts to tailor content to advertisers, putting an overemphasis on traffic, etc. started to come down from above. Whether or not the "stick to sports" edict was smart from a business standpoint (and I have no clue), in my experience, nobody starts changing their content dramatically unless the business isn't doing very well and they start panicking. Nobody is immune from that in tough environments like the one we are in, most notably ESPN, which has done all of those things.

    Editorial independence and the sanctity of journalism doesn't have much of a home with staying power, when the site you are talking about loses money and the business itself doesn't have long-term viability. That is probably the case here.

    That sometimes isn't a function of who owns the thing or anything they did. It sucks for anyone who works there and feels they are now stuck with something they didn't sign up for, and I am sympathetic to anyone bemoaning it, but it also doesn't change the reality of the business they hitched themselves to. There is only so much demand for what they think the site should be, and it seems to be way oversupplied right now. That's the actual reality.
     
    The Big Ragu, Oct 31, 2019
    #159
    justgladtobehere and cake in the rain like this.
  4. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    She gone too (several days old)
    I choose to blame the private equity guys.


    As of today, Deadspin is like a thousand other shitty sports blogs out there.

    Lets see them get million dollar ad buys from the State Farms of the world today
     
    poindexter, Oct 31, 2019
    #160
  5. typefitter

    typefitter Well-Known Member

    I think the situation is hugely complex, and I don't have any answers for anything. But I don't remember a time when that weird balance between wanting to do good writing that makes you proud, and wanting to get paid a reasonable sum for it, has ever been so fraught. There are hardly any safe spaces anymore. Writers have always been beholden to commercial interests if they ever wanted to make a living wage, but man. It all feels increasingly thin and desperate.
     
    typefitter, Oct 31, 2019
    #161
    OscarMadison likes this.
  6. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    If you squint just right ... or maybe I'm just envisioning some hijinks ... Portnoy is going to get money people together to buy Deadspin after which he will hold a public execution of Deadspin and even more public funeral of Deadspin on Barstool. /squinting and grinning
     
    Songbird, Oct 31, 2019
    #162
  7. Azrael

    Azrael Well-Known Member

    Gawker made a lot of enemies. One of whom, Peter Thiel, had the resources to kill Gawker. He did so by financing the Hogan suit.

    There's a long chain of cause and effect here. Beginning with Denton.

    And there remains to this day a certain myopia on the part of that staff as to how and why any of this happened.

    Eventually they pulled the whole thing down on their own heads, as any great ending requires.
     
    Azrael, Oct 31, 2019
    #163
  8. typefitter

    typefitter Well-Known Member

    What I never got about Gawker/Deadspin, apart from the weird self-mytholigyzing that went on there—like, they were, at the end of the day, just blogs—was how they thought it was within their rights to publish inflammatory and critical things about management. Like, I've never worked anywhere that would be okay. Who is going to pay you to shit talk them in print? Maybe I'm old, and maybe I'm too commercially minded, but I've always understood that you can't shit where you eat. It's just... part of being a grownup? Like, that's just what it means to be employed.
     
    typefitter, Oct 31, 2019
    #164
    OscarMadison and JackReacher like this.
  9. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    [​IMG]
     
    Songbird, Oct 31, 2019
    #165
  10. poindexter

    poindexter Well-Known Member

    I don't think those people are idiots. I think they saw the handwriting on the wall, and jumped instead of being pushed.

    just my opinion from a thousand miles away
     
    poindexter, Oct 31, 2019
    #166
  11. Songbird

    Songbird Well-Known Member

    Lifted from ...

     
    Songbird, Oct 31, 2019
    #167
  12. Regan MacNeil

    Regan MacNeil Well-Known Member

    John Oliver does it pretty much every week. He calls his overlords "Business Daddy."
     
    Regan MacNeil, Oct 31, 2019
    #168
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