Great Hill Partners, the new parent company of G/O Media, may not have been aware of exactly what it purchased when it comes to Deadspin. A memo leaked to The Daily Beast on Monday shows that the company is making an effort to curb the non-sports content on Deadspin.
The note was apparently in the wake of Deadspin staffers publishing a post complaining about the number of autoplay ads that run on the site. That post was also Tweeted out by the Gizmodo Media Group (the former name of the G/O Media properties) union.
It isn’t just calling out ownership’s business practice that has drawn ire. G/O Media Editorial Director Paul Maidment also discussed wanting to see an end of political posts showing up on Deadspin in the memo leaked by Maxwell Tani in The Daily Beast.
“Where such subjects touch on sports, they are fair game for Deadspin. Where they do not, they are not. We have plenty of other sites that write about politics, pop culture, the arts, and the rest, and they’re the appropriate place for such work,” the memo reads.
It is hard to predict exactly how this gets resolved. Outside of politics, there is plenty of non-sports content on Deadspin including the annual “Hater’s Guide to the William Sonoma Catalog,” a holiday tradition for Drew Magery. Is that now off limits too? It seems silly for G/O Media to demand a site like Deadspin, that built its brand by being irreverent and critical of all things, to stop being irreverent and critical of all things.
Deadspin already lost its editor-in-chief in August. Megan Greenwell did not mince words on her way out the door, telling The Daily Beast “I have been repeatedly undermined, lied to, and gaslit in my job.” How those still under the Great Hill Partners umbrella react to the latest move remains to be seen.
