Popular sports website Deadspin has officially handed out pink slips to every staffer at the company after it was sold to a new startup firm just several months after one of its writers accused a 9-year-old boy of being racist. This is a prime example of reaping what you sow. Had these miscreants not attempted to ruin a young man’s life for some face paint at a football game, well, they might all still be employed.
Here’s more from the Daily Caller:
Deadspin staffers received an email informing them that G/O Media, who owned Deadspin until Monday, sold the sports website to the newly formed European startup firm Lineup Publishing “after careful consideration,” according to screenshots of the email. Lineup Publishing reportedly decided to get rid of Deadspin’s existing staff, leading the company to part ways with all of its current staff.
“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,” the email reads. “While the new owners plan to be reverential to Deadspin’s unique voice, they plan to take a different content approach regarding the site’s overall sports coverage. This unfortunately means that we will be parting ways with those impacted staff members, who were notified earlier today. I would like to thank them for their hard work and efforts that helped make Deadspin stand out in the crowded sports media space.”
https://twitter.com/FOS/status/1767244881863336012?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Julie DiCaro, a senior writer for the company, revealed that staffers only received a “half an hour’s notice” about its sale and have already been locked out of company laptops and the communication app Slack.
The sale of the company comes four months after senior writer Carron Phillips tried to ruin the young life of 9-year-old Holden Armenta after he accused him of being racist for rocking a headdress and black and red face paint while cheering on his favorite football team, the Kansas City Chiefs. Phillips, a propaganda maker, posted only photos showing Armenta wearing the black face paint and tried to say it was “black face.” He also accused him of being racist against Native Americans.
Just one problem.
The boy himself is Native American.
Armenta’s family later revealed that their son is Native American. His grandfather, Raul Armenta, is a business committee member at the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians, according to a short bio of the elder Armenta.
The article, initially titled “The NFL needs to speak out against the Kansas City Chiefs fan in Black face, Native headdress,” said the child found a way “to hate Black people and the Native American at the same time.” The outlet later updated the story to remove all of the photographs and any other “identifying information” about Armenta and assured readers it was not attacking the fan.
“We regret any suggestion that we were attacking the fan. To that end, our story was updated on Dec. 7 to remove any photos, tweets, links, or otherwise identifying information about the fan. We have also revised the headline to better reflect the substance of the story,” the editor’s note goes on to say.
The boy’s parents filed a lawsuit against Deadspin and G/O Media in the early part of February after the outlet did not retract the story or issue an apology to the family for attacking their son. The lawsuit described Armenta as going through a tough time after the article came out.
“Sadly, H.A. will never know a life in which his face and name are not inextricably linked to false accusations of racist conduct,” the lawsuit stated. “When you Google H.A.’s name, the first result states that he has ‘been accused of racism by a reporter’ for Deadspin. The second alleges that the ‘article alleged that [the Armenta’s] son, [H.A.], exhibited racist behavior[.]’ The third describes what happened to H.A. as a ‘viral hit piece.’”
Poor kid.
As far as I’m concerned, the people at Deadspin are getting what they deserve.
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