Left-leaning sports news outlet Deadspin laid off its entire staff on Monday after parent company G/O Media finalized a deal to sell the struggling brand to a European media startup. The takeover by Lineup Publishing—which reportedly has no interest in retaining current Deadspin staffers—comes just over a month after the sports blog was hit with a defamation lawsuit for accusing a 9-year-old football fan of a racist display of “blackface.”
In a companywide email announcing the sale, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller reported that the company had been “approached by the European firm Lineup Publishing expressing interest in purchasing Deadspin to add to their growing media holdings.”
“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 wrote. “While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadpin’s unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage.”
As such, Lineup Publishing has opted not to “carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand.”
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As reported by Axios, G/O Media has been steadily offloading sites and reducing staff over the last year in a cost-cutting effort spurred on by pressure from investors. In November, the company shuttered feminist publication Jezebel and laid off its 23 staffers, later selling the brand to Paste Magazine. Lifestyle site Lifehacker had previously been sold off last March, resulting in 13 more job cuts.
Similar trends have been reflected elsewhere in the media industry as well. Digital sites like The Messenger, BuzzFeed News, and Jezebel have all shut down within the last year, and legacy publications like the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal saw significant staffing reductions. Most recently, Vice Media, once valued at $5.7 billion, shut down its website and laid off several hundred employees.
Related: Vice Media Shuts Down Website Amid Mass Media Layoffs
Terms of the Deadspin deal were not disclosed, but 11 staffers based in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago have reportedly been terminated, immediately locked out of company computers, and escorted out of their respective offices.
Among those former staffers is senior writer Carron Phillips, who set off an embarrassing backlash against the publication late last year. In November, Phillips accused 9-year-old Holden Armenta of a despicable act of racism for wearing “blackface” and a Native American headdress to a Kansas City Chiefs game.
The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native Headdress, blared Phillips’ headline, which was featured prominently on the site. Deadspin ran with a photo showing just the right side of Armenta’s face, which was indeed painted black.
However, other photos of the boy revealed that his face was painted solid red on the other side in a war paint style consistent with the Chiefs’ team colors.
To make matters worse for Phillips, Armenta also has Native American heritage, and his grandfather sits on the board of the Chumash Tribe in Santa Ynez, California, rendering the claim of anti-indigenous racism completely unfounded.
Though Deadspin quietly tweaked the headline, changed the feature image on the article, and attempted to issue an apology for “any suggestion that we were attacking” the boy, the backlash against the outlet did not subside.
Shortly after the article went viral, the Armenta family filed a lawsuit against Phillips and Deadspin for defamation seeking an unspecified amount in damages. The sale of Deadspin to Lineup Publishing is unlikely to affect the suit, as the case also targets G/O Media.
“Journalism — and the country as a whole — is better today now that Carron Phillips no longer has a platform to target innocent kids with his agenda-driven writing,” Libby Locke, the lawyer representing the family, told the New York Post on Monday. “We are also grateful to G/O Media for infusing the company with cash that can be used to pay the judgment the Armenta family is going to win against it.”
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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