Sports-blogging and pop-culture website Deadspin is being sold by parent company G/O Media. All of Deadspin‘s employees were laid off on Monday.
G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced Monday that the sports blogging website will be sold to European startup Lineup Publishing, and none of Deadspin‘s employees will be retained by the new owner. Former Deadspin writer Julie DiCaro said on X Monday that the staff got a half-hour notice about the layoffs, and employees were immediately locked out of internal Slack channels and laptops.
“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 said in a memo to employees, according to Axios.
“While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadpin’s [sic] unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage.”
Deadspin is currently facing a defamation lawsuit from the family of a nine-year-old Kansas City Chiefs fan because of accusations from former Deadspin writer Carron J. Phillips that the child wore blackface at a Chiefs game last year. Holden Armenta, the young Chiefs fan, is part Native American and wore red and black face paint at a Chiefs game in November, according to the complaint filed by his family last month. The Chiefs frequently use Native American imagery in the franchise’s promotional materials.
Phillips’s initial article used a featured image of the child, only showing the side of his face that was covered in black paint. He accused the kid of racism towards black and Native Americans for wearing the face paint and called on the NFL to do something about it.
Deadspin eventually updated the piece after widespread criticism and legal threats from Armenta’s family. At the top of the article, an editor’s note claims the publication had no intention of attacking Armenta or his family, and the featured image now shows NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.
Deadspin is not the only well-known, left-wing blog to be unceremoniously dumped by G/O media over the past few months. G/O Media shuttered and eventually sold the feminist blog Jezebel to Paste magazine last November.
Private equity firm Great Hill Partners purchased G/O Media, then known as Gizmodo in 2019, and tensions with management caused Deadspin employees to quit en masse to launch the sports-and-culture website Defector in September 2020.