Defector | Know Your Meme

About

Defector is a website comprised of former Deadspin employees who resigned from the site after Paul Maidment, then the editorial director of G/O Media, told Deadspin staff to “stick to sports” and fired editor Barry Petchesky. The site will not run ads and be accessible through a subscription service. The site will launch in September of 2020.

History

In October of 2019, Deadspin published an article critical of G/O Media. The piece led to Paul Maidment, the editorial director of G/O media, to tell the team to “stick to sports.” The move was criticized by the staff at the time, and Deadspin editor Barry Petchesky was fired. Much of Deadspin’s staff resigned in protest. Deadspin hired new staff under Jim Rich and moved to Chicago from New York.

On July 28th, 2020, many of the staffers who resigned from Deadspin announced a new site called Defector. Tom Ley will serve as Editor In Chief. The site will not make its money through ads and instead be accessible through a subscription service of varying tiers, with the lowest tier being $69 dollars a year, or roughly $8 a month.

The company has no outside investors, and each employee has a stake of 5% in the venture. They can vote out the editor-in-chief with a 2/3s majority vote. Jasper Wang, a former Bain & Company employee, will serve as its vice president of revenue and operations.

Online Presence

The day of Defector’s announcement, the New York Times published an article about the site’s creation. Ley said, “A lot of us felt adrift. If we felt that way, it’s likely there are pretty significant numbers of former readers who felt that way and would be willing to pay money to have that kind of publication come back.” Saler Kalaf, a former Deadspin managing editor, wrote, “It would be cool to show that this could be successful. If we tried it and it doesn’t work, at least we can say we tried it.”

Online, people expressed excitement about Defector. Journalist Libby Watson tweeted, “I smashed that subscribe button faster than you can say ‘herb,'” gaining over 540 likes (shown below, left). User @fakegimel wrote a parody to the lyrics of “September” expressing their excitement for the site (shown below, right).

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