There was no grace period from G/O Media after Editorial Director Paul Maidment sent a memo the Deadspin staff enforcing a “stick to sports” mandate earlier this week. The mandate was leaked Monday, and by Tuesday, Deadspin’s interim editor-in-chief Barry Petchesky was fired.
“Hi! I’ve just been fired from Deadspin for not sticking to sports,” Petchesky tweeted Tuesday afternoon. Petchesky, like much of Deadspin’s writing staff, took issue with the company’s new policies handed down from Maidment.
“Where such subjects touch on sports, they are fair game for Deadspin. Where they do not, they are not. We have plenty of other sites that write about politics, pop culture, the arts, and the rest, and they’re the appropriate place for such work,” the note from Maidment read. The enforced course of action was reportedly in response to staffers publishing a post complaining about the number of autoplay ads that run on the site.
In an act of rebellion against G/O Media’s new demands for Deadspin, staffers filled the website with previous popular non-sports stories Tuesday morning. One of those stories, The Adults In The Room was published by former Deadspin editor-in-chief Megan Greenwell, criticizing G/O Media on her last day with the company in August. G/O Media was formed by Great Hill Partners after the equity firm purchased a cluster of websites including Deadspin.
After Petchesky’s firing was announced and met with much public disdain, Maidment released a statement explaining the decision.
“Yesterday I sent a memo to Deadspin staff stating that our sports site should be focused on sports coverage. As I made clear in the note, sports touches on nearly every aspect of life — from politics to business to pop culture and more. We believe that Deadspin reporters and editors should go after every conceivable story, as long as it has something to do with sports. 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,” Maidment wrote.
Petchesky is fired from Deadspin and their new ownership group after writing nearly 20,000 posts for the website in the last decade.
Brandon Contes is a freelance writer for BSM. He can be found on Twitter @BrandonContes. To reach him by email click here.
