By Friday, every editor and writer was gone from Deadspin, but the sports-culture site chugged along, sort of, by posting previously-submitted contributor content. One freelance contributor, it seemed, was a brand-new guy… but then he quit too.
Alan Goldsher, the freelancer in question, told TheWrap that indeed, Friday was his “first and last” day with Deadspin. Yes, more people have now publicly ditched Deadspin than were even on its staff when the week began.
After Goldsher, a musician and ghost-writer, posted a tweet announcing his “debut” at the site, a representative for Deadspin’s parent company, G/O Media, confirmed to TheWrap by email that Goldsher was “a contributor.” Before the original story identifying the new addition amid the mass exodus even published on TheWrap’s home page, the representative had sent a second email: “Based on his recent tweet, it appears as though Alan is no longer affiliated with Deadspin.”
And what a tweet it was. In a follow-up to the now-deleted first message about his Deadspin “debut,” Goldsher posted a fast placeholder: “Deleting this tweet. Apology tweet to come.”
From there, he addressed the 1000-plus replies his “debut” had generated on the microblogging platform, writing, “I’ve listened to the room, and I’m out of Deadspin. I hear what you guys are saying, and I respect it. This clearly wasn’t a good idea, and I appreciate that I was pointed in the right direction.”
Saying he was “pointed in the right direction” was a diplomatic way of relaying what happened. Goldsher was harshly criticized, by blue-checkmarked media professionals and civilians alike, as a “scab” for agreeing to work with Deadspin the week all of its staff resigned in protest over the firing of editor Barry Petechsky and the corporate “stick to sports” mandate that preceded it.
“Color me naive, but I had no idea this would move so many people, that you were all this passionate. Not to be all woe-is-me, but in my 20-plus years as a freelancer, I never had ANY significant support from colleagues,” he continued. “That’s my personal experience. That’s my reality. Former Deadspin writers should be thrilled that their community has their back. If I’d ever had that kind of support, I probably would’ve looked at the opportunity much differently.”
He thanked users for calling him a “scab,” noting, “If that hadn’t have happened, I would’ve had no clue that the general public felt this way.”
Goldsher also said the mean tweets made him “super-sad” and would impact his own willingness to send similar ones in the future.
He told TheWrap his day was “pretty wild” before excusing himself to “go be a daddy for a bit.”