Essentially dormant since almost its entire editorial staff resigned en masse about three months ago after being told to “stick to sports,” Deadspin has a new editor in chief in place and is planning to relaunch under his leadership.
Jim Rich, the former top editor at the New York Daily News who also held high editorial positions at The New York Post, and Huffpost in addition to other publications, has been hired by Deadspin’s parent company G/O Media to take over the site.
Rich will be based in Chicago and plans to hire a staff of about 20 people, some of whom could be former Deadspin staffers, according to The Washington Post.
The 48-year-old can relate to Deadspin’s departed staffers as he himself resigned from The Daily News in 2018 over the direction of the newspaper after it was acquired by Tronc.
Under Rich’s leadership, the new Deadspin will continue to be “unafraid about pursuing stories that other outlets shy away from,” he said.
“Obviously, there are a lot of raw emotions around this site … which I think is incredibly unfortunate and tragic, really, in the grand scheme of the journalism landscape,” Rich told Variety. “I had mixed emotions [about accepting the job] but I felt it was too good of a site to let it die completely. There will be value to what I bring to this based on what I’ve done in my career.”
Though neither the company nor Rich has said when the site will relaunch, he officially takes the reins on January 27.
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