A popular sports website was told to stick to sports — and staff members revolted.
Deadspin, a sister site to Gizmodo and Jezebel, is the latest blog run by G/O Media involved in an escalating conflict with its new owner, Great Hill Partners, a private equity firm based in Boston.
[Update: How Deadspin imploded.]
When a memo circulated to Deadspin staff on Monday about the site’s editorial direction was met with derision, management shot back. The site’s interim editor in chief, Barry Petchesky, who had worked there for 10 years, tweeted Tuesday that he had been fired for “not sticking to sports.”
It comes less than two months after the site’s previous editor in chief resigned.
“Sports touches on nearly every aspect of life — from politics to business to pop culture and more,” Paul Maidment, G/O Media’s editorial director, said in an emailed statement Tuesday, referring to the memo he had written.
“We believe that Deadspin reporters and editors should go after every conceivable story, as long as it has something to do with sports,” he added. “We are sorry that some on the Deadspin staff don’t agree with that editorial direction and refuse to work within that incredibly broad mandate.”
Mr. Petchesky did not reply to a request for comment.
Deadspin — at one time the sports equivalent of Gawker — is known for its irreverence, with a motto promising: “Sports News Without Access, Fear, or Discretion.” It was acquired in April from Univision when it was part of Gizmodo Media Group. The bundle of sites was then renamed G/O Media.
Though sports has been Deadspin’s focus since its beginning, the site has also delved into political coverage and was praised for its 2014 analysis of “Gamergate,” one of the first exhaustive looks at the issue of sexism and harassment in the world of video games. Indeed, it would have been hard for reporters to avoid any mention of politics when covering the numerous sports incidents that occurred as a response to the rise of President Trump, including the N.F.L. quarterback Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the national anthem and the booing of Mr. Trump at a World Series game on Sunday night.
“To create as much great sports journalism as we can requires a 100% focus of our resources on sports,” Mr. Maidment said in the memo, which has been viewed by The New York Times.
The memo, which was first reported by The Daily Beast, prompted a puckish response from Deadspin’s staff members Tuesday: They only published articles having little or nothing to do with sports, including a post about a pumpkin thief in Washington, another discussing the virtues and demerits of various wedding dress codes (keep it simple, the author urges) and a resurfaced long-form article on an obscure German actor who played a villain in “Ghostbusters II.”
The sole exception was a post about the booing of Trump. In his memo, Mr. Maidment allowed that “where such subjects” like culture, business and politics “touch on sports, they are fair game for Deadspin.”
“Where they do not,” he added, “they are not.”
By late afternoon, the Deadspin home page returned to topical sports stories: the World Series game on Tuesday night and N.F.L. head coaches. “Deadspin staffers had nothing to do with the changes on the front page,” the staff’s union said in a tweet.
In fact, Mr. Maidment assumed direct control of Deadspin on Tuesday, according to two sources with knowledge of the situation. G/O Media has been looking for a new full-time editor in chief since its previous editor, Megan Greenwell, left in August.
There has been a broader debate in sports journalism about how much, or little, coverage there should be of politics. ESPN has publicly wrestled with a sense of journalistic obligation to acknowledge divisive events during an unusually polarizing moment in American life, while balancing it against many fans’ desire for sports to serve as a welcoming refuge from the wider world.
Less than a year ago, posts on The Concourse, the section of Deadspin reserved for non-sports coverage, averaged more than twice as many page views as average Deadspin posts, according to internal numbers seen by The Times. Concourse posts made up approximately one of every 50 Deadspin posts.
The dispute reflects an atmosphere between G/O Media and Deadspin that has become increasingly tense.
It is the second conflict between G/O Media management and staff this week. The sites published a post stating they had heard negative reader feedback about ads that autoplayed with volume on the websites and “are as upset with the current state of our site’s user experience as you are.” Management took down the post, according to the staff’s union, which condemned the move.
Ms. Greenwell, Deadspin’s last editor in chief, published an essay in August on her final day accusing Great Hill Partners and the chief executive of G/O Media, Jim Spanfeller, of “narrowing the scope of Deadspin’s coverage” for business reasons.
Earlier this year, Deadspin and G/O Media owners were at war over an article on Mr. Spanfeller that was published by a Deadspin staff writer. Mr. Spanfeller accused writers and editors of acting in bad faith based on a list of questions submitted to him before publication and the fact that a draft of the article had been sent for legal review before he had a chance to respond. In a response, Ms. Greenwell, then the editor in chief, described the reporting process as “ongoing” and said she had planned to incorporate Mr. Spanfeller’s answers in the published article.
Deadspin is not the only site under G/O Media’s scrutiny. Earlier this month, it shuttered Splinter, a politics blog that was seen as the closest descendant of Gawker, the gossip site that was shut down after Terry G. Bollea, who was a professional wrestler under the name Hulk Hogan, won a $140 million settlement in an invasion-of-privacy lawsuit financially backed by the conservative Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel.