Deadspin Is Being Burnt To The Ground By Its New Management As Staff Quits Or Revolts
Furnished content.
If you're a sports fan and you're not familiar with Deadspin.com, then, no, you're not a sports fan. The former Gawker property is certainly one of the most popular sports sites on the web and was a bright spot even when under Gawker Media's management. The charm of Deadspin has always been its irreverence, its humor, and its willingness to take on stories that fall outside of the realm of sports reporting. The fanbase of the site was built upon this editorial practice.Gawker fell to Hulk Hogan and Peter Thiel, of course, leading the site to be sold to Univision. During that time, Deadspin continued to operate normally. The site, along with other Gizmodo Media properties, was then sold to Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm. Great Hill put in place Paul Maidment as Editorial Director. Alongside Great Hill attempting to clamp down on the Deadspin staff's use of encrypted communications, leading to a fairly severe backlash from Deadspin, Maidment recently sent an edict to the Deadspin staff demanding that they not do any posts or reporting that fall outside of the world of sports.The conflict was set off Monday, when Paul Maidment, the editorial director of G/O Media, sent a memo to the staff, telling them to focus their coverage on sports."Deadspin will write only about sports and that which is relevant to sports in some way," he wrote in the memo, which was first reported by The Daily Beast.Also on Monday, a Deadspin blog post that solicited reader feedback on the site's features, including autoplay video ads, was removed. The post had previously appeared across the portfolio of sites, including Kotaku and The Root. G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller personally directed the company's CTO to remove the posts, a staffer told CNN Business.Petschesky claimed in a tweet that in doing so management had violated the company's collective bargaining agreement with the Gizmodo Media Group union. (Gizmodo Media Group is the previous name of G/O Media.) That would be Barry Petchesky, editor in chief at Deadspin. It's important to remember that the staff at G/O Media is a union that collectively bargained their contracts. G/O Media denies the violation of the union agreement, which requires a vote among several executives. Regardless, the message that Deadspin was to "stick to sports" from here on out didn't, ah, go over all that well.Instead of heeding management's mandate, staffers filled Deadspin's homepage on Tuesday morning with non-sports stories that had been popular in the past, seemingly a nod to their argument that stories that are not strictly about sports have been favorites of Deadspin's regular readers. Perhaps most telling among the selections was "The Adults In The Room," an article published by former Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell on her last day at the site in which she condemned the actions of Deadspin's parent company, G/O Media.The rebellion has not been without consequences. Deadspin interim editor-in-chief Barry Petchesky tweeted Tuesday, "Hi! I've just been fired from Deadspin for not sticking to sports." Petchesky's firing kicked off a firestorm of its own, with GMG Union tweeting its condemnation of the firing in a statement. The Writers Guild of America East, which represents GMG Union, issued its own statement in solidarity. And, more importantly, the Deadspin staff continued to revolt.Deadspin staffers published several new stories to The Concourse on Tuesday. Editor Tom Ley wrote about meeting "three good dogs" in Mexico City and fellow editor Dan McQuade wrote about a pumpkin thief. Writer Kelsey McKinney wrote about "acceptable wedding dress codes." None of the stories mentioned the word "sports" or had any connection to sports. The site has been basically dormant since Tuesday. Given that the World Series just concluded, it's a rather telling and tough time for a well known sports journalism property to instead be headlining "I Would Have Sex With An Entire Major League Baseball Team If Given The Opportunity." And, worse than the ongoing revolt, large swaths of Deadspin staff of varied levels of fame have announced they are leaving the company as a result of this whole fiasco. The latest exodus came Thursday morning as Drew Magary, the site's best known writer, announced he had quit as well.Magary, perhaps the site’s best-known writer, announced his resignation Thursday morning. He joined a list of staffers leaving in recent days. Most elected to quit over a management edict to “stick to sports.” While Deadspin was founded in 2005 as a sports-centric site, it has branched out into several coverage areas, from the arch and waggish to more serious political and social commentary. With Magary out at Deadspin, the site might as well be dead. And for what? Because a private equity firm and its editorial puppet wanted a site that had built its own success out of not sticking to sports to start sticking to sports? To what end? It's well known that the "stick to sports" edict generally means "don't talk anything related to politics." Even for a sports site, that's just stupid.As stupid, in fact, as burning a successful site to the ground for no discernible reason.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
Read more here
posted at: 12:00am on 01-Nov-2019
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)
Deputy Sued Over Forced Baptism Sued Again By A Minor Alleging Another Bizarre Mixture Of God And Invasive Searches
Furnished content.
Hamilton County (TN) Deputy Daniel Wilkey is one sick man. Recently, we covered his elevation into the ever-swelling ranks of Law Enforcement Officer What Have Been Sued. But Wilkey joined in the most spectacular fashion: he was sued twice in the same day.This wasn't the only thing that made Deputy Wilkey stand out. The allegations were highly unusual, to say the least. In one case, Deputy Wilkey claimed to be able to smell the odor of marijuana emanating from a car that passed him while his cruiser idled on a cross street. This and alleged illegal window tint were used to justify a stop that escalated into the nonconsensual anal search of the vehicle's passenger, resulting in the tearing of the man's anus and the aggravation of his existing hernia.The second lawsuit's allegations were just as disturbing. And they wandered off into areas not normally seen in civil rights lawsuits. The second plaintiff claimed Deputy Wilkey searched her car and her bra before telling her she'd get off with a lighter punishment if she agreed to be baptized in a nearby lake. This weird ritual was carried out in the presence of Deputy Jacob Goforth, who did nothing to stop Wilkey's forced baptism of a female citizen.Wilkey is facing two more lawsuits, according to WRCB TV. And there's even more weird sociopathy present in the accusations. On July 9th, Deputy Wilkey was sued by a man who claims the deputy used excessive force during a traffic stop over window tint.This lawsuit [PDF] claims the deputies performed an illegal search of his vehicle by detaining him until they could run a drug dog around his car. The drug dog supposedly alerted but no drugs were found. The deputies also allegedly told the man to stand with his hands on the hot hood of a vehicle, resulting in burns.The second lawsuit [PDF], filed October 17th, details Deputy Wilkey's harassment of six minors in a vehicle. Once again, Wilkey told the driver and occupants he had stopped them for illegal window tint. He was also accompanied by Deputy Jacob Goforth, who was present during Wilkey's forced baptism of another driver. Wilkey also claimed he "smelled weed," apparently to justify the actions he took next. He ordered all of the minors out of the car and began doing things only Deputy Wilkey would ever do.Without any lawful justification, Wilkey then ordered the minors to take their cell phones and place the phones inside the vehicle.As Goforth stood by and watched, Wilkey began a series of comments to the minors about religion and said that he was "praying" for them.Interspersed in his comments about God, Jesus and religion were Wilkey's insults, foul language, and comments about how the minors will end up like their "piece of s#*t parents" and become "disappointments." Well then.As Goforth stood by in apparent silent approval, Wilkey told the minors the "law" did not allow them to call their parents. He then ordered the single male minor to strip down. The minor stripped down to his boxers. Wilkey told the minor to take his boxers off. The minor refused.Wilkey then searched the five females, running his hands over their entire bodies and spending extra time on their breasts, buttocks, and crotches. He pulled out one minor's bra and "shook" it, supposedly looking for contraband. (He did the same thing to the woman he forcibly baptized.)The entire ordeal lasted nearly two hours, with the minors being subjected to Wilkey's prayers, insults, and groping while standing in the rain.The lawsuit then goes on to point out the Sheriff's Office has refused to discipline or fire a number of deputies and jailers who have engaged in serious misconduct. It has also failed to do anything with Deputy Wilkey other than give him a paid vacation.Wilkey has had four lawsuits filed against him this year. Three of the four allege their stops were predicated on window tint violations. Two of the four state Wilkey claimed he "smelled weed." Two of the lawsuits allege horrific levels of misconduct tied to Wilkey's very unique brand of religion. There's a pattern here and patterns are bad news for law enforcement agencies that hope to get themselves dismissed from lawsuits.Then there's Deputy Goforth who has stood by and allowed Wilkey to violate rights. Hopefully that will hurt him just as much as these lawsuits will hurt Deputy Wilkey.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story
Read more here
posted at: 12:00am on 01-Nov-2019
path: /Policy | permalink | edit (requires password)
|
|