
Deadspin Staffers Are Quitting - IfOnlyYouKnew
https://www.thebiglead.com/posts/deadspin-writers-quitting-g-o-media-controversy-01drf9syxbdp
======
IfOnlyYouKnew
Here's (some of) the reasoning from (one of) the horse's mouth:
[https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the-
room-183...](https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/the-adults-in-the-
room-1837487584)

~~~
xyzzyz
_The real and less romantic story is this: The journalists at Deadspin and its
sister sites, like most journalists I know, are eager to do work that makes
money; we are even willing to compromise for it, knowing that our jobs and
futures rest on it. An ever-growing number of media owners, meanwhile, are so
exceedingly unwilling to reckon with the particulars of their own business
that they refuse to accept our eagerness to help them make money._

 _(...)_

 _A metastasizing swath of media is controlled by private-equity vultures and
capricious billionaires and other people who genuinely believe that they are
rich because they are smart and that they are smart because they are rich, and
that anyone less rich is by definition less smart. They know what they know,
and they don’t need to know anything else._

Why don't the journalists who know how to run the business pool their
resources up and start a business then? What's stopping them? What do they
need those venture capital vultures for?

~~~
CPLX
I mean they did. The actual business we are talking about was started the way
you suggest, and was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now
being (apparently) mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people.

Is your premise that the journalists have no right to be mad at what they
perceive as an unjust wielding of economic power?

~~~
xyzzyz
_The actual business we are talking about was started the way you suggest, and
was then destroyed by a vindictive billionaire, and is now being (apparently)
mismanaged by a bunch of other rich people._

If so, that's only more reason to leave. If they all leave, they can start a
competing business managing it the way they want, while the rich people are
left with worthless husk.

I'd also like to note that it was not destroyed by "vindictive billionaire",
but by a result of jury trial, which punished them for keeping a private sex
tape up despite the court order telling them to take it down. Allow me to
opine that it doesn't really give me a feeling that they know how to run a
successful business.

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richard_mcp
I like how a site with autoplay ads is reporting this.

~~~
artek
According to WSJ [1] the issue was that the ads were autoplaying with sound
on. Just auto playing by itself isn't considered intrusive by the industry.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/hostilities-rise-inside-g-o-
med...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/hostilities-rise-inside-g-o-media-over-
autoplay-video-ads-and-politics-11572392147)

~~~
big_chungus
Some of us don't want to spring for unlimited data plans and get rather
frustrated when reading textual news incurs the charges associated with
streaming video. Bandwidth is not boundless for everyone.

------
manigandham
Not sticking to sports is why they failed and needed new management and more
invasive ads for revenue in the first place.

~~~
samfbiddle
This is completely wrong. Gawker Media was a profitable, growing company until
Peter Thiel wrecked it and its subsidiary sites were sold to a series of
increasingly incompetent owners. Deadspin's "non-sports" articles were
regularly among its most widely read.

In fact, here's a person whose job it was to sell ads for Deadspin explaining
that you are incorrect:
[https://twitter.com/jillian_schulz/status/118967386127042969...](https://twitter.com/jillian_schulz/status/1189673861270429696)

~~~
at-fates-hands
> until Peter Thiel wrecked it.

This is wrong.

Gawker media were confident they could operate freely in legal grey areas and
fall back on their “freedom of speech” defense when they published Hulk
Hogan’s sex tape without his knowledge.

The fact they decided to go to court and challenge Hogan over his claims of
defamation was their own poor choice. The only thing Thiel did was bankroll
Hogan’s legal team.

A.J. Daulerio’s deposition and subsequent cavalier appearance and court
testimony was probably the last nail in their coffin.

In short, Gawker had been playing with fire before and escaped. The fact they
thought this would be another easy escape proved to be their undoing.

Nobody but Gawker and their editors who thought they could publish anything,
about any celeb is what cost them their publication and their jobs - not just
one guy who financially supported Hogan in his civil case.

~~~
Consultant32452
Let's not forget why Thiel was upset at Gawker. They outed him as gay, putting
his life in danger because he did business in places where the penalty for
homosexuality is death.

~~~
Dylan16807
No, a _billionaire_ is not in danger of death because he _does business_
somewhere that has such a penalty.

A billionaire can afford security or not go in person.

Does not going in person harm his ability to make deals? Maybe, maybe not. But
that doesn't even resemble "life in danger".

~~~
throwawaysea
This is an outrageous position to take. You’re basically acknowledging that
Thiel could come to face physical violence due to Gawker’s irresponsible
actions but that he could just change his actions and choices to avoid this.
That is, it reads like “No his life isn’t in danger if he goes out of his way
to avoid the danger”.

~~~
Dylan16807
Going to a very small list of countries purely to make more money, when you
already have a billion dollars, is not at all a necessary or important life
activity. The inability to do so is a very trivial inconvenience.

~~~
manigandham
Running a tabloid news story is not a necessary or important life activity
either, especially when it actively harms someone else (regardless of their
wealth or connections).

~~~
Dylan16807
Yep, entirely accurate. There was no need to run that story, even though the
harm done wasn't life-changing.

------
JansjoFromIkea
This was Univision wasn't it? Kotaku is falling apart right now too, also done
an impressively terrible job killing off the AV Club (I reckon there could be
a case study in there about how not to do a rebrand tbh, have hardly viewed it
since). They seemed to think they could just pull the audiences from about a
dozen very different websites and mould them into one site.

~~~
bbanyc
Univision bought most of the remains of Gawker, merged it with their own site
Fusion (later renamed Splinter, now defunct) and the Onion/AV Club, and sold
it to the current owners of G/O at a massive loss.

In this media environment, with profitability seemingly tied to the whims of
Facebook's recommendation algorithm and major sites like Mic and ThinkProgress
dropping left and right, I don't know if anyone can survive without a deep-
pocketed owner who can fund years of losses.

