G/O Media has finally found someone to run Deadspin.
Months after the site’s entire staff resigned, G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller announced in a memo shared with The Daily Beast that Jim Rich, a former top editor at HuffPost and the New York Daily News, will run the site from Chicago starting next month.
Rich’s hire comes as the company has struggled to fill some top editorial roles as many of the company’s employees have battled Spanfeller. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Rich seemed to dismiss concerns that by coming on-board he is betraying the spirit of the Deadspin employees who resigned en masse to protest management’s “stick to sports” editorial edict, effectively shutting down the site.
“The fact is, I have nothing to do with the previous situation,” Rich told the Journal. “I’m coming in cold, and I’m hoping to make the best of what has up to this point been an unfortunate situation because I think that the title has a lot to offer to the world.”