The website Deadspin was known for being a leftist dumpster fire, where numerous sports stories they discussed had a leftist or racist focus on it.
I say “was” because Deadspin no longer exists, at least, not in its former form. The site was sold by G/O Media to a British startup company called Lineup Publishing. Furthermore, not a single member of Deadspin’s staff kept their current jobs.
The New York Post reported that the 11 employees on staff had just a 30 minutes heads up before being notified that they lost their jobs. While that’s a crummy way to handle letting go of your employees, the reason for why they lost their jobs as a result of the sale makes perfect sense.
G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said that the reason that no staff members survived the transition was because Lineup Publishing wanted to create a different voice for the website.
In an email response to the sale, Spanfeller wrote:
“Deadspin’s new owners have made the decision to not carry over any of the site’s existing staff and instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand. While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadpin’s [sic] unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage.”
Translation? Lineup Publishing understood that being overtly racist isn’t exactly a successful way to run a business!
Deadspin had been publishing all kinds of race-baiting stories on its website for years, but one in particular may have led to their doom.
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In November of 2023, Deadspin writer Carron J. Phillips - Yeah a “Karen" (you can’t make this up) - framed a young fan as racist because he wore black paint to a Kansas City Chiefs game. Phillips originally wrote an article with this headline and cover photo, the latter of which showed the fan’s black face paint.
“It takes a lot to disrespect two groups of people at once,"Phillips wrote." On Sunday afternoon in Las Vegas, someone in the stands at the Kansas City Chiefs game wore a headdress and face paint that some observers found objectionable, leading to lots of unanswered questions."
When he published this article, he chose not to uncover several key details about the story that ended up being his demise.
The first example was that Phillips intentionally only showed the black side of the young fan’s face without showing the fact that the other part was painted in Chiefs red. That’s incredibly malicious!
Second, after figuring who this kid was, a 9-year-old boy named Holden Armenta, we learned that he had Indian ancestry. So if anyone had the right to wear an Indian headdress to a game and not be criticized as racist (not that anyone should), it was this kid!
New photo of the person @Deadspin accused of being a vile racist who wore blackface at a football game.
— Bobby Burack (@burackbobby_) November 27, 2023
(They tried to ruin this kid's life)https://t.co/MEhDaQIIlS pic.twitter.com/5dvud08npf
Holden and his parents detailed that the story caused them all - but especially Holden - to suffer immense backlash, with Holden even saying that it made life “scary.”
So after Phillips did all of this, the Armentas ended up suing Phillips and Deadspin for defamation in early February. Just over a month after they filed the lawsuit, Spanfeller sold the website.
People use sports as a space to take a break from reality, not to watch race-baiters smear young kids. Deadspin’s failure to recognize this contributed to its downfall.
It’s unclear exactly what Lineup Publishing wants from its new website at the moment. But starting off with changing the voice from this poor excuse for “sports coverage” is a good start.
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