Deadspin Sold, Entire Staff Laid Off Months After Outlet Falsely Accused Young Chiefs Fan of Racism
Deadspin, the far-left sports news and opinion blog that defamed a child last November, was sold by its owner Monday, and all staffers lost their jobs, according to a report.
The outlet’s decision to falsely accuse a nine-year-old boy and NFL fan of wearing blackface at a Kansas City Chiefs game in Las Vegas and then refuse to retract it was not mentioned in a report of the sale by Axios.
Axios, which also did not mention the allegations of racism by Deadspin against elementary school student Holden Armenta, reported the company’s owner G/O Media announced a sale of the site to Europe’s Lineup Publishing.
The report claimed G/O Media CEO Jim Spanfeller said the decision was made with his investors in mind.
The Axios report also claimed every person at Deadspin lost their job on Monday:
“Spanfeller said none of Deadspin’s existing staff will move over with the site as part of the deal, and the new owners will ‘instead build a new team more in line with their editorial vision for the brand.’
“Impacted staffers were notified Monday that they were being let go from G/O Media, marking the third round of cuts at the firm in less than a year.”
Whether G/O Media’s bottom line led to the decision to put all those staffers out of a job was purely financial or whether the site’s decision to stand by a hateful attack on a small boy contributed to the sale will likely never be known.
But Deadspin’s Carron J. Phillips found a selectively edited photo of Armenia wearing a headdress with black paint on one side of his face and wrote that the boy, “found a way to hate Black people and the Native Americans at the same time.”
Despite numerous images out there that showed the boy’s face was also painted red, Deadspin and Phillips ran with the deceptive one in the attack on the child, and when pressured to be honest, completely refused to retract the article.
Deadspin is utter trash.
They are trying to smear a child for wearing black and red face paint in the style of the Kansas City Chiefs and used a picture that deliberately hid the red side of the child’s face in an attempt to claim he was wearing black face. pic.twitter.com/EneY5YComD
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) November 28, 2023
Instead, Deadspin’s editors updated the article a number of times and tried to frame the story thesis as one in which it was calling for a change in how the NFL handled issues of race.
The only thing the Armenta family ever received was this non-apology editorial note:
“On Nov. 27, Deadspin published an opinion piece criticizing the NFL for allowing a young fan to attend the Kansas City Chiefs game against the Las Vegas Raiders on Nov. 26 wearing a traditional Native American headdress and, based upon the available photo, what appeared to be black face paint.
“Unfortunately the article drew attention to the fan, though our intended focus was on the NFL and its checkered history on race, an issue which our writer has covered extensively for Deadspin.”
The story got worse for the far-left blog when it was learned the child who was attacked happened to be Native American.
But the article was never deleted, and Armenta was never issued the groveling apology he deserved, so his parents sued.
It’s not clear if Lineup Publishing agreed to put itself on the hook for the lawsuit.
It also remains to be seen if Deadspin will experience a temporary shutdown during its selloff. The site had recent news up as of Monday afternoon.
One screenshot that went viral Monday purported to come from Deadspin senior writer Julie DiCaro, who reportedly stated she was locked out of her work software and let go with 30 minutes’ notice:
Staff at Deadspin just received an email informing them that the company has been sold to a European firm, and none of them will be retained.
(via @JulieDiCaro) pic.twitter.com/XxCYG0HI75
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) March 11, 2024
DiCaro’s X account was locked down as of Monday afternoon.
Deadspin lived full-throttle by making itself a lightning rod of controversy — both before and during its ownership by G/O media.
Now, every single staffer who stood by Phillips and his hate piece have all lost their jobs.
Seeing dozens of people put out of work is rarely something to celebrate, and that’s not to say a celebration is necessarily in order here.
But to know that people who cashed in on a bad-faith attack on a child will have to find something else to do can’t be a bad thing.
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