G/O Media Has Sold Off Just About All Its Sites Eighteen Months After Denying It Was Selling Off All Its Sites ⇥ defector.com

In January 2024, Mark Stenberg reported for Adweek that G/O Media was “shopping around its portfolio of editorial assets” — which normal people call “publications” or “websites” — “in hopes of securing buyers for individual titles”. Stenberg included a statement from G/O Media in which a representative said “[y]our reporting is largely incorrect”.

Jim Spanfeller, CEO of G/O Media, in an “epilogue” published earlier this month, just a year and a half later:

This week the sale of Kotaku to Keleops, the buyers of Gizmodo, was announced. Coming on the heels of Redbrick, a Canadian company, buying both Quartz as well as The Inventory, this leaves G/O Media with just The Root. And while The Root is a wonderful site and a very good business it is now abundantly clear that G/O Media is and has been working towards a full wind down.

No kidding?

I am a little worried for the Root, a publication that deserved better than being hollowed out, and will probably get unceremoniously offloaded to some other private equity firm to run it into the ground like its siblings. But it is the last remaining part of this group after the downfall of G/O was triggered by the company’s demand that Deadspin stick to sports.

That, with time, brought us Defector, where Samer Kalaf writes:

As Defector approaches its five-year anniversary in September, here’s a message for Jim Spanfeller: I’m glad that this still eats at you. You overplayed your hand, and everyone watched you destroy your already flimsy reputation. The unnecessary cost was that you hounded talented people out of their jobs, but many of them have gone on to thrive elsewhere. Meanwhile, what you did to a bunch of beloved publications will be the defining moment of your career, maybe even the defining moment of your parasitic life. I’d say that it’ll be the first line of your obituary, but let’s be honest: No one’s writing one of those for you.

Spanfeller’s hubris can take credit not only for Defector, but also the Autopian and Aftermath, launched by former writers from Jalopnik and Kotaku, respectively. Meanwhile, the Onion is in better hands and is still trying to buy Infowars. Spanfeller’s meddling may have ruined a lot of jobs, but at least his influence over a “future driven in in great part by digital content” — his words — is minimal.