The left-wing sports news site Deadspin is under new management as of Monday, and its entire staff is now looking for a job.
The website was sold to a journalism start-up from Europe, and on Monday, staffers were told that the new company would completely clean house and start with all new employees.
Jim Spanfeller, the CEO of parent company G/O Media that sold the sports site, broke the news to employees in a memo that sent them all scrambling.
“Recently, we were approached by the European firm Lineup Publishing expressing interest in purchasing Deadspin to add to their growing media holdings,” Spanfeller said in his message to the New York Post.
Spanfeller said Lineup Publishing has decided not to “carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand.”
“The rationale behind the decision to sell included a variety of important factors that include the buyer’s editorial plans for the brand, tough competition in the sports journalism sector, and a valuation that reflected a sizable premium from our original purchase price for the site,” Spanfeller explained.
Email to Deadspin staffers today informing them that they've been sold and the new owner will not be retaining any of them. pic.twitter.com/KHg384zVmy
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) March 11, 2024
G/O Media has owned Deadspin since 2019
The Daily Beast added that the now-fired employees were immediately locked out of all company emails, workflow, and computer systems. Those employees at the office were escorted off the premises.
The firings come on the tail of an embarrassing woke scandal in which one of the site’s top writers accused a nine-year-old NFL fan of being a “racist” at a Kansas City Chiefs Game last year.
In Nov., senior Deadspin writer Carron Phillips blasted Chiefs fan Holden Armenta as a “racist” for wearing “black face” at a game when images of the boy wearing an Indian headdress, a Chiefs jersey, and black facepaint went viral. Phillips blasted the child, his parents, and the NFL as a racist against both blacks and Native Americans, but what he didn’t report was that the boy had half black and half red facepaint — which are the colors of the NFL team — and that the boy himself has Native American heritage.
Why is @Deadspin @carronJphillips trying to ruin this little kid’s life? They’re accusing him of blackface but conveniently left out his full face which was painted for the game https://t.co/kFfgAL4aDH pic.twitter.com/750u5sfETE
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) November 28, 2023
The article was eventually updated to reflect more of the facts, but the family eventually filed a lawsuit against Deadspin for defamation, anyway.
The entire incident was a severe stain on Deadspin’s already woke, partisan reputation.
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