 | |
| Predecessor | Gizmodo Media Group |
|---|---|
| Founded | April 8, 2019 |
| Headquarters | New York, New York |
Key people | Jim Spanfeller (CEO) |
| Owner | Great Hill Partners |
| Subsidiaries | |
| Website | g-omedia |
G/O Media Inc. is an American media holding company [1] that owns and operates several digital media outlets, including Gizmodo , Kotaku , Jalopnik, The Root , The Inventory, and Quartz . [2] [3]
G/O was formed in April 2019 when Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm, purchased the websites from Univision for $18.9 million. [4] [5] Prior to the sale, the former Gawker Media properties had operated as Gizmodo Media Group after being acquired by Univision following the conclusion of the Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit and subsequent bankruptcy in 2016. [6] [7] [8] Former Forbes executive Jim Spanfeller became the CEO of G/O Media. [9] In the first twelve months following its purchase of the websites, G/O shut down Splinter News in November 2019 [10] and sold ClickHole in February 2020 to Cards Against Humanity. [11]
In mid-October 2021, G/O Media removed all images from stories published before the acquisition by Great Hill Partners in 2019 from the 11 websites it owns, including Gizmodo, Jalopnik, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, The Onion, and Jezebel. No reason was given but was speculated to be related to copyright infringement lawsuits the company was involved in. [12]
From 2023 onwards the company began to dispose of sites that it owned, with Lifehacker being sold in March 2023 to Ziff Davis, [13] while Jezebel was shuttered [14] and then sold in November 2023 to Paste along with Splinter News. [15] In January 2024, Adweek reported that G/O Media was looking to sell off the remaining sites under its ownership, following failed efforts to find buyers for the whole organisation. The company claimed the reporting was "largely incorrect" but didn't specify how. [16] On March 11, 2024, G/O Media sold Deadspin to the European start-up Lineup Publishing, who immediately laid off all of Deadspin's employees. [17] Later that month, G/O Media sold The A.V. Club to Paste and The Takeout to Static Media, with it also reported that the company was actively looking for buyers of The Onion. [18] The Onion was sold in April 2024 to a company called Global Tetrahedron. [19]
G/O Media's leadership, introduced after the purchase from Univision, has been subject to frequent criticism by employees. [9] Complaints include closer advertiser relationships, a lack of diversity, and suppression of reporting about the company itself. [9] In October 2019, Deadspin's editor-in-chief, Barry Petchesky, was fired for refusing to adhere to a directive that the site "stick to sports." [20] Soon after, the entirety of Deadspin's staff resigned in protest, leaving the site inactive. [21] In November 2021, Gawker reported on substantial staff resignations at Jezebel over the course of 2021, comprising around 75% of staff. The resignations were reportedly related to a "hostile work environment" created by G/O's management and the new deputy editorial director Lea Goldman. [22] In January 2022, another article detailed similar staff decline at The Root, with 15 out of 16 full-time staff having left throughout 2021 since Vanessa De Luca started as editor-in-chief, [23] while at The A.V. Club seven senior staff members left the site after management required them to move from Chicago to Los Angeles. According to the Chicago Tribune , the departing staffers cited a lack of salary increase to account for increased cost of living due to the transfer. [24]
The company also saw multiple disputes with the employee unions. In January 2020, the GMG Union, which represents the staff of six G/O Media sites, announced a vote of no confidence in CEO Jim Spanfeller, citing, among other issues, a lack of willingness to negotiate for "functional editorial independence protections." [25] On February 4, 2021, the Writers Guild of America East filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board alleging that G/O Media told employees it had fired Alex Cranz for labor activism. [26] On March 1, 2022, GMG Union members went on strike after failing to reach an agreement on a new contract. [27] The strike was resolved on March 6 with a new contract that included some of the members' terms. [28] On June 29, 2023, G/O Media implemented a "modest test" of artificial intelligence-generated content on its websites, in a move similar to BuzzFeed and CNET . The move sparked backlash from GMG Union members, citing AI's track record of false statements and plagiarism from its training data, with basic errors in the generated content also attracting attention. [29] [30] In January 2024 a strike involving members of The Onion Union, which represents workers at other G/O Media sites, was narrowly averted following an agreement. [31]
The Onion is an American digital media company and newspaper organization that publishes satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The company is based in Chicago but originated as a weekly print publication on August 29, 1988, in Madison, Wisconsin. The Onion began publishing online in early 1996. In 2007, they began publishing satirical news audio and video online as the Onion News Network. In 2013, The Onion ceased publishing its print edition and launched Onion Labs, an advertising agency.
Gawker was an American blog founded by Nick Denton and Elizabeth Spiers that was based in New York City and focused on celebrities and the media industry. According to SimilarWeb, the site had over 23 million visits per month as of 2015. Founded in 2002, Gawker was the flagship blog for Denton's Gawker Media. Gawker Media also managed other blogs such as Jezebel, io9, Deadspin and Kotaku.
Gawker Media LLC was an American online media company and blog network. It was founded by Nick Denton in October 2003 as Blogwire, and was based in New York City. Incorporated in the Cayman Islands, as of 2012, Gawker Media was the parent company for seven different weblogs and many subsites under them: Gawker.com, Deadspin, Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Jalopnik, and Jezebel. All Gawker articles are licensed on a Creative Commons attribution-noncommercial license. In 2004, the company renamed from Blogwire, Inc. to Gawker Media, Inc., and to Gawker Media LLC shortly after.
Kinja is a free online news aggregator, launched in April 2004. It is operated by G/O Media. It was formerly operated by Gizmodo Media Group, which was purchased by Univision Communications during Gawker Media's bankruptcy.
Nicholas Guido Anthony Denton is a British Internet entrepreneur, journalist, and blogger. He is the founder and former proprietor of the blog collective Gawker Media, and was the managing editor of the New York City-based Gawker, until a lawsuit by Terry Bollea bankrupted the company.
Kotaku is a video game website and blog that was originally launched in 2004 as part of the Gawker Media network. Notable former contributors to the site include Luke Smith, Cecilia D'Anastasio, Tim Rogers, and Jason Schreier.
Paste is an American monthly music and entertainment digital magazine, headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, with studios in Atlanta and Manhattan, and owned by Paste Media Group. The magazine began as a website in 1998. It ran as a print publication from 2002 to 2010 before converting to online-only.
The A.V. Club is an online newspaper and entertainment website featuring reviews, interviews, and other articles that examine films, music, television, books, games, and other elements of pop-culture media. The A.V. Club was created in 1993 as a supplement to its satirical parent publication, The Onion. While it was a part of The Onion's 1996 website launch, The A.V. Club had minimal presence on the website at that point.
Deadspin is a sports blog founded by Will Leitch in 2005 and based in Chicago. Previously owned by Gawker Media, Univision Communications and G/O Media, it was sold to Lineup Publishing in March 2024.
Lifehacker is a weblog about life hacks and software that launched on 31 January 2005. The site was originally launched by Gawker Media and is owned by Ziff Davis. The blog posts cover a wide range of topics including Microsoft Windows, Macintosh, Linux programs, iOS, and Android, as well as general life tips and tricks. The website is known for its fast-paced release schedule from its inception, with content being published every half hour all day long.
Gizmodo is a design, technology, science, and science fiction website. It was originally launched as part of the Gawker Media network run by Nick Denton, and runs on the Kinja platform. Gizmodo also includes the sub-blogs io9 and Earther, which focus on pop-culture and environmentalism respectively. Since April 2019, Gizmodo is part of G/O Media, owned by private equity firm Great Hill Partners.
TelevisaUnivision is a Mexican-American media company headquartered in New York and Mexico City that owns American Spanish language broadcast network Univision and free-to-air channels in Mexico such as Las Estrellas, Canal 5, Foro, and NU9VE alongside a collection of specialty television channels and production studios. 45% of the company is held by the Mexican telecommunications and broadcasting company Grupo Televisa, which was a major programming partner for Univision until the company sold their content assets to Univision in 2022.
The Root is an African American-oriented online magazine. It was launched on January 28, 2008, by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Donald E. Graham.
io9 is a sub-blog of the technology blog Gizmodo that focuses on science fiction and fantasy pop culture, with former focuses on science, technology and futurism. It was created as a standalone blog in 2008 by editor Annalee Newitz under Gawker Media. In 2015, io9 became a part of Gizmodo as part of a reorganization under parent company Gawker.
Jezebel is a US-based website featuring news and cultural commentary geared towards women. It was launched in 2007 by Gawker Media under the editorship of Anna Holmes as a feminist counterpoint to traditional women's magazines.
The Fusion Media Group is a division of Univision Communications. The company was launched in April 2016 after Univision bought out Disney's stake in Fusion through the Fusion Media Network joint venture between Univision & Disney-ABC. While Univision is focused on serving Hispanic America in Spanish, FMG is the company's multi-platform, English language division targeting young adults.
Gizmodo Media Group was an online media company and blog network formerly operated by Univision Communications in its Fusion Media Group division. The company was created from assets acquired from Gawker Media during its bankruptcy in 2016. In April 2019, Gizmodo and The Onion were sold to private equity firm Great Hill Partners, which combined them into a new company named G/O Media.
Splinter is an American left-leaning news and opinion website owned by G/O Media. It launched in July 2017 and ceased publication in November 2019. The dormant publication was acquired by Paste in November 2023 and relaunched March 26, 2024.
James J. Spanfeller Jr. is an American executive known for running Forbes.com from 2001–2009. He is currently the CEO of G/O Media which consists primarily of sites that were previously part of Gawker Media. Spanfeller was hired by private equity firm Great Hill Partners to run the company after it was purchased from Univision. He is also a past Chairman of the IAB and longtime executive board member of Digital Content Next (DCN).
James Rich is an American journalist and newspaper editor. Originally known for his sports coverage with the New York Post, Rich has served twice as editor-in-chief of New York's Daily News, also editing The Huffington Post and later the sports website Deadspin on two separate occasions.