After the mass exodus of staffers at Deadspin last week, the revolt within G/O Media continued Monday when an anonymous blogger published a crude essay pretending to be written by G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller, on the publisher’s own blogging platform, Kinja.
Titled “A Confession,” the post — bylined under Spanfeller’s name — offers a salacious explanation for “why recent events have occurred,” presumably referring to the hollowing-out of Deadspin’s editorial staff and the recent closure of sister site Splinter: “The truth is that I have for many years suffered from a particular problem, and that is that I find it hard to get ‘excited.’”
“For many years this has sat with me and pushed me to rash decisions but not long after joining G/O Media a freak accident, involving standing on my desk while changing a lightbulb, revealed the solution,” the pseudo-Spanfeller wrote. “That the vibrations of my computer monitor managed to achieve growth not seen in years.”
The post continues:
So after much testing the technical staff in the Kinja team devised a solution, the more angry the comments the higher the power delivered. This has seen me deliberately tank the sites under my ownership in a desperate bid to achieve more and more anger, like a high just out of reach.
So please understand, I’m the victim here. Share this far and wide so all my former staff realise that I’m just a man, petty in character, just trying to find some joy in my life and failing completely. Just like how I’ve failed as a CEO.
So tonight when you go to sleep just imagine me, legs split over the desk, genitalia just flopping out, grinding desperately against a CRT monitor to achieve one more greasy finish, and unable to get there.
The post appears to have been published at 12:03 p.m. on Monday and, as of this article’s publishing, has not been removed. The identity of the author, or whether they are a current or former G/O media employee, is not currently know. G/O Media did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Wrap.
Last week, Emma Carmichael, a former editor at Gawker Media — G/O Media’s former name — published a disparaging piece about Spanfeller on Kinja titled “Jim Spanfeller Is a Herb.” Herb, pronounced like the name, is a slang term that generally refers to someone who is extremely uncool and unlikable, often by being arrogant but also incompetent.
That post was read over 100,000 times before someone at G/O Media changed the URL for the post from emma.kinja.com to the difficult-to-search lajskhclsahkchkad.kinja.com, as Slate’s Ashley Feinberg discovered. The post has since been removed entirely from Kinja and, according to Feinberg, the site now prevents anyone from publishing other posts referring to Spanfeller as a herb.
The future of the blogging platform is also being reviewed, as comments have been disabled and all posts now appear with this disclaimer:
Dear Kinja User,
Based on feedback, G/O Media is reevaluating the options for maintaining Kinja user pages and they will remain accessible at this time.
Sincerely,
G/O Media