I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things?
This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writers want, instead of writing about what the people who are paying them want. That seems fine if the company agrees. I think some companies make that work, might even be a good idea. But if the company doesn't agree, well, I mean that's ok too, right? And the writers can quit if they don't like it (as they appear to have done), and good for them if they can achieve their vision elsewhere.
I think it would be wrong if the management was asking them to deceive people, or break laws. But presumably writing about sports is not abhorrent to any of the writers. Why all of a sudden did it become noble to tell your boss that they can't tell you what to do at work, for work related activities?
Am I a freedom fighter if I tell my boss that I'm not going to code that thing they want to get out the door next week, I have a pet project that I really like, and then me and all my other co-workers go on strike when I can't do that?
Have any of the writers/editors who resigned singled out the "stick to sports" mandate from this week as their reason for leaving? It's clearly a contentious point between the management and workers, but based on their own reports and some outside reporting the new management was pretty bad.
"After I submitted my resignation, explaining that the ongoing undermining from my bosses made it impossible for me to continue to succeed in my job, and that I believed I was putting my staff at risk by staying, the CEO threw a tinier tantrum. When I passed Spanfeller in the office a week after I put in notice, he let out a cruel barking laugh, as if he was disgusted to be in my presence. I said “you can speak to me, you know,” and he responded in a tone familiar to anyone who was ever bullied in middle school. “I don’t want to,” he sneered."[0]
"Two people with knowledge told The Daily Beast that in a private meeting, Spanfeller reviewed the coverage of Lexus with the editor-in-chief of Jalopnik, a car-focused website, to ensure that its stories did not discourage the luxury automaker from advertising with G/O sites. On a separate occasion, sources said, the new CEO suggested that reporters and editors at Kotaku—once a Gawker-owned gaming website—bring a sales representative to interviews with gaming executives."[1]
> Am I a freedom fighter if I tell my boss that I'm not going to code that thing they want to get out the door next week, I have a pet project that I really like, and then me and all my other co-workers go on strike when I can't do that?
Yes, if you thought that thing you were going to code was antithetical to freedom. Just because you do or don't do something at work doesn't mean it's exempt from ethical scrutiny by either employees or society at large.
Let’s say you worked at a profitable restaurant called SaladSpin. SaladSpin, true to its name, sells salads, and they’re pretty good. However, SaladSpin also sells pizzas, and these pizzas are absolutely incredible. People travel from miles around to eat these pizzas, and they easily outsell the salads by a ratio of two or three to one. One day, SaladSpin comes under new management who decide that they want SaladSpin to “stick to salads” and stop selling pizzas. Wouldn’t you, as a worker who both takes pride in the quality of pizzas you make and understands that pizzas are the key to SaladSpin’s popularity and profitability, try to fight this decision? Personally, I think that loyalty to SaladSpin’s customers, who love the pizzas, is more important and worthy than loyalty to these purported superiors who don’t really understand or care why anyone liked SaladSpin in the first place.
> I am largely confused about this whole discussion. Why are we trying to figure out if the Deadspin bosses are justified in whether they want their writers to write about sports related things?
I'm confused about your confusion. If they felt the need to make a justification public, and the justification is based on a lie and/or idiocy, would you not expect those affected by that justification (as writers, readers, or those concerned about private equity firm buyouts) to discuss it?
Moreover, what's the motivation for dissuading that discussion?
I'm surprised commenters here seem to be siding with management when:
* They only bought the site about a year ago.
* They've replaced a number of women/minority executives with white, male, nepotism hires.
* The editorial mandate to "stick to sports" violates the CBA with the GMG Union, which prohibits the owners from having editorial say.
* There have been numerous complaints from both writers and commenters on the site about the decline in the quality of the content since the takeover.
* About a week ago, obnoxious, auto-playing, with-sound video ads starting covering every article, and the comments in every section complained about them. The writers made a post asking for feedback, which management removed and only then said "stick to sports".
I mean really, it just takes a quick look at the comment section of any article to see how mad the commenters have been about this issue. Oh wait, management removed the comments on Deadspin (and no other kinja site). They also drove away some of the most popular writers on the site, like Drew Magary, and that's where the complaints about the decline in quality come from. The whole thing has just been incompetent mismanagement for a long time, and as a long-time reader, has been one of the biggest bummers since Joystiq was shuttered.
> I'm surprised commenters here seem to be siding with management
Why is this surprising? HN is an outlet that worships startups, makes founders into deities, and generally comments “if employees aren’t happy they should leave” on every worker-related article.
It makes more sense if you read the comments understanding that many commenters want to be the founder of the next “unicorn” and get rich.
OK. Leaving aside that the whole article kind of smells of self-justification over the approach of the LA Times itself to reporting actual news vs. opinion, there's a mathematical issue here. If Deadspin were relatively unpopular with sports fans, their non-sports content would naturally be relatively popular due to it's general audience appeal. And even if this weren't true, most fans care about their particular sport, meaning that the non-sports articles will by the same logic have better viewership even if they are less popular with every given segment of the Deadspin audience. Thus, the content can be "well received" without actually building the site's target audience(s), the targeted audience(s) for which their advertisers pay an (assumed) premium.
> the targeted audience(s) for which their advertisers pay an (assumed) premium.
Online advertising does not work this way, and has not for years. Advertisers bid on the right to show users an ad, per ad, based on all of the surveilled data known about that user. Deadspin will get the best bid price per-user regardless of what demographic the winning advertiser was targeting.
G/O Media has several brands that already do woke journalism. How many do they need for this? How many concentrate on sports exclusively? To use a sports metaphore, it's about zone coverage.
As I said on prior posts... Deadspin should stick to sports for the same reason Pizza Hut doesn't sell Tacos. Coverage across brand identities. Even if Tacos may make more money than Pizza in aggregate, they aren't there to sell Tacos.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Deadspin may individually make a little more money. How much less are they making by effectively turning away potential fans of sports by bringing in stories on identity politics? The population is roughly 1/3 left, 1/3 centrist and 1/3 right. As it stands they are alienating 1/3 to 2/3 of their potential audience.
Deadspin's "brand identity" _was_ that they didn't stick to sports. That's why people liked them.
Your analogy is backwards. Deadspin had a profitable pizza business ("woke sports journalism"), and the new management insisted they pivot to tacos ("just sports"). Now the original customers don't like them ("We _liked_ pizza") and they've failed to attract anyone new (since the taco lovers still have ESPN and basically every single other sports news outlet).
On the other hand, if you buy a business entirely dependent on human capital, then proceed to instigate a mass resignation, there is no amount of spin that adds up to anything other than boneheaded decision making.
Let's turn it around and think about tech, Google amazed people with their 20% time. 20% of your time to do wha you want to do - it kept engineers motivated and spawned new ideas. It was a fantastic recruiting tool too. If you stick someone in a box and tell them they're never getting out, guess what? They're going to lose motivation. Pretty much one of the fundamentals of tech is getting engineers motivated. A motivated engineer is 1000x more effective than a great, but bored, engineer. Why can't people realise this pattern can be generalised.
If they have a writer that can write a good story, why wouldnt they just hand it off and publish it in a different kinja vertical? I get the "do the job we hired you for" but at the same time, I would think a pool of versatile writers, and letting your thoroughbreds run, is a better tactic than pigeonholing them to one topic (when the empire covers nearly every topic.) If a deadspin writer writes a car article, post it on jalopnik; a tech article, gizmodo; a listicle, clickhole. Kinja is already so cross polinated, i agree with management that its simpler for the reader to click sports to see sports stories. But the writers are right that they should be encouraged to write interesting articles. Despite others claiming deadspins woke politics is what gave them their identity, I dont really believe readers would care WHICH kinja property an article was posted too. If its a good, well recommended article, ill read it just the same if its on deadspin or gizmodo.
Deadspin was the ONLY sports site I would go to, largely because it was the one place where you could count on the writers to examine the context that sports occurs in. Sports doesn't exist in a vacuum. Deadspin was the place where we might get the next Cosell.
The reason this is a story is that it's calling out the bullshit reasoning of management, not that management doesn't have a right to decide the content of their media properties. Many of us have sat through meetings with leadership who are endlessly rationalizing their decisions with crappy data, and felt the frustration that comes with being able to see through the half-truths. This article is interesting because they did some research and called their bluff with actual numbers.
Welcome to the 21st century where you can have valid reasons but face the endless threat of bad press and litigation for giving them. Almost every manager and CEO I know is afraid to give constructive feedback in employee reviews. The fact that they came up with some bs explanation with holes isn’t news to me. Imagine what the press would be if they said “I told them to do their f’n job 5x and they didn’t”
So unfair! If only a sports publication left it's writers alone to wander off onto non-sports related politics[1], ignoring the publisher's plan & repeatedly digressing from the job they were hired to do, the world would be a better place.
Read their top ten most visited stories list [1] and tell me how many of those are 'sticking to sports.' You don't just get to assume reality...data is a thing and can be used to evaluate statements of what is true.
[+] [-] aristophenes|6 years ago|reply
This isn't about free speech. Each one of the writers has the ability to write to their own blog, to tweet whatever they want. This is about some writers insisting that a company pays them money to write about whatever the writers want, instead of writing about what the people who are paying them want. That seems fine if the company agrees. I think some companies make that work, might even be a good idea. But if the company doesn't agree, well, I mean that's ok too, right? And the writers can quit if they don't like it (as they appear to have done), and good for them if they can achieve their vision elsewhere.
I think it would be wrong if the management was asking them to deceive people, or break laws. But presumably writing about sports is not abhorrent to any of the writers. Why all of a sudden did it become noble to tell your boss that they can't tell you what to do at work, for work related activities?
Am I a freedom fighter if I tell my boss that I'm not going to code that thing they want to get out the door next week, I have a pet project that I really like, and then me and all my other co-workers go on strike when I can't do that?
[+] [-] nammi|6 years ago|reply
"After I submitted my resignation, explaining that the ongoing undermining from my bosses made it impossible for me to continue to succeed in my job, and that I believed I was putting my staff at risk by staying, the CEO threw a tinier tantrum. When I passed Spanfeller in the office a week after I put in notice, he let out a cruel barking laugh, as if he was disgusted to be in my presence. I said “you can speak to me, you know,” and he responded in a tone familiar to anyone who was ever bullied in middle school. “I don’t want to,” he sneered."[0]
"Two people with knowledge told The Daily Beast that in a private meeting, Spanfeller reviewed the coverage of Lexus with the editor-in-chief of Jalopnik, a car-focused website, to ensure that its stories did not discourage the luxury automaker from advertising with G/O sites. On a separate occasion, sources said, the new CEO suggested that reporters and editors at Kotaku—once a Gawker-owned gaming website—bring a sales representative to interviews with gaming executives."[1]
[0]https://archive.is/P38Bw
[1]https://www.thedailybeast.com/gizmodo-media-staff-enraged-at...
[+] [-] platinum1|6 years ago|reply
Yes, if you thought that thing you were going to code was antithetical to freedom. Just because you do or don't do something at work doesn't mean it's exempt from ethical scrutiny by either employees or society at large.
Something similar at Google for instance: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/11/27/google-...
and again regarding a military contract: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-alphabet-defense/google-t...
[+] [-] mobjack|6 years ago|reply
You believe that those changes would be detrimental to the product and company that you worked so hard to make a success.
The discussion is whether the CEO made a good business decision or if the writers and editors know more about what made them a success before.
[+] [-] InvisibleCities|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicalist|6 years ago|reply
I'm confused about your confusion. If they felt the need to make a justification public, and the justification is based on a lie and/or idiocy, would you not expect those affected by that justification (as writers, readers, or those concerned about private equity firm buyouts) to discuss it?
Moreover, what's the motivation for dissuading that discussion?
[+] [-] guelo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dlbucci|6 years ago|reply
* They only bought the site about a year ago.
* They've replaced a number of women/minority executives with white, male, nepotism hires.
* The editorial mandate to "stick to sports" violates the CBA with the GMG Union, which prohibits the owners from having editorial say.
* There have been numerous complaints from both writers and commenters on the site about the decline in the quality of the content since the takeover.
* About a week ago, obnoxious, auto-playing, with-sound video ads starting covering every article, and the comments in every section complained about them. The writers made a post asking for feedback, which management removed and only then said "stick to sports".
I mean really, it just takes a quick look at the comment section of any article to see how mad the commenters have been about this issue. Oh wait, management removed the comments on Deadspin (and no other kinja site). They also drove away some of the most popular writers on the site, like Drew Magary, and that's where the complaints about the decline in quality come from. The whole thing has just been incompetent mismanagement for a long time, and as a long-time reader, has been one of the biggest bummers since Joystiq was shuttered.
[+] [-] ivanech|6 years ago|reply
This is what makes the situation special. It's in the contract.
[+] [-] drewbug01|6 years ago|reply
Why is this surprising? HN is an outlet that worships startups, makes founders into deities, and generally comments “if employees aren’t happy they should leave” on every worker-related article.
It makes more sense if you read the comments understanding that many commenters want to be the founder of the next “unicorn” and get rich.
[+] [-] rancor|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msbarnett|6 years ago|reply
Online advertising does not work this way, and has not for years. Advertisers bid on the right to show users an ad, per ad, based on all of the surveilled data known about that user. Deadspin will get the best bid price per-user regardless of what demographic the winning advertiser was targeting.
[+] [-] tracker1|6 years ago|reply
As I said on prior posts... Deadspin should stick to sports for the same reason Pizza Hut doesn't sell Tacos. Coverage across brand identities. Even if Tacos may make more money than Pizza in aggregate, they aren't there to sell Tacos.
In the end, it doesn't matter if Deadspin may individually make a little more money. How much less are they making by effectively turning away potential fans of sports by bringing in stories on identity politics? The population is roughly 1/3 left, 1/3 centrist and 1/3 right. As it stands they are alienating 1/3 to 2/3 of their potential audience.
[+] [-] variaga|6 years ago|reply
Your analogy is backwards. Deadspin had a profitable pizza business ("woke sports journalism"), and the new management insisted they pivot to tacos ("just sports"). Now the original customers don't like them ("We _liked_ pizza") and they've failed to attract anyone new (since the taco lovers still have ESPN and basically every single other sports news outlet).
[+] [-] papln|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yum!_Brands
https://www.google.com/search?q=joint+pizza+hut+taco+bell&tb...
As does Jack-in-the-Box
https://www.jackinthebox.com/food/taco-and-sides/two-tacos
[+] [-] cadlin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Traster|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] basch|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] valenciarose|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dandelo53|6 years ago|reply
Seems like a good way to superficially limit opportunity with that line of reasoning.
[+] [-] Angostura|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kaikai|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lefstathiou|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeBeater|6 years ago|reply
I mean, they already got the publicity about it, right? They can even play a "by the writers" angle.
[+] [-] zone411|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwGuardian|6 years ago|reply
[1]: https://theconcourse.deadspin.com/dont-doubt-what-you-saw-wi...
[+] [-] avs733|6 years ago|reply
[1] https://deadspin.com/the-top-10-most-visited-deadspin-storie...
(A year I arbitrarily picked because it was on top of google)
[+] [-] strbean|6 years ago|reply
How dare they!?
[+] [-] Xero|6 years ago|reply
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