Area Man Takes Over the Onion and Gizmodo Group in Private Equity Deal
Area Man Takes Over the Onion and Gizmodo Group in Private Equity Deal
(Bloomberg) -- Move over, T. Herman Zweibel. The Onion has a new owner.
Univision Communications Inc. has sold the satirical website, along with former Gawker Media properties including Gizmodo, Deadspin and Jezebel, to Great Hill Partners. The private equity firm has enlisted veteran digital editor Jim Spanfeller to run the new outfit.
Spanfeller once headed Forbes.com and went on to build a digital-content company that he sold to Tronc Inc. -- not an intentionally satirical name itself -- in 2017. (Tronc was renamed Tribune Publishing last year.) He will be a “significant” investor in the new company created from the Univision assets, to be called G/O Media, Great Hill said in a statement.
The sale, for undisclosed terms, marks the second ownership change for the former Gawker Media empire in three years. Univision bought the former Gawker sites, except the namesake flagship, for $135 million in a 2016 bankruptcy auction, intent on expanding beyond its niche in Spanish programming. The company struggled to get a return from its online properties and has offered employees buyout packages to cut costs.
Facebook Effect
Since the 2016 sale, the fortunes of digital-media companies have soured as Facebook Inc. and Google have taken ever-larger shares of online advertising dollars away from publishers. Other media companies, including BuzzFeed Inc. and Vice Media Inc., have dismissed employees in recent months as the industry tightens its belt.
In an interview, Spanfeller said all employees who worked specifically for the websites that were sold would be part of the new company, suggesting there would be no layoffs. He said he saw opportunities to expand the company’s programmatic advertising and charge for subscriptions to extra articles. The former Gawker Media sites are known for their snarky attitude, and Spanfeller has no plans to alter that.
“To suggest we’d want to change the voice would be foolish,” he said. “These guys have built incredible reach and done that with a very robust percentage of loyalists.”
He added that he has been a loyal reader of Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jalopnik and the Onion.
“The Onion,” he added, “is a lot of fun.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Gerry Smith in New York at gsmith233@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net
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