Adopted Minnesotan Drew Magary joins the exodus from Deadspin
The mass exodus of writers from Deadspin now includes the adopted Minnesotan and at times reluctant Vikings fan Drew Magary.
The website originally owned by Gawker Media, which filed for bankruptcy in 2016 after being sued for sharing the Hulk Hogan sex tape, was among a group of former Gawker sites sold earlier this year to a private equity firm and a former Forbes CEO calling themselves G/O Media.
This week, it was reported that G/O Media issued a diktat to the editorial team at Deadspin, telling its writers to "stick to sports."
While Deadspin was created primarily for sports-centric posts, its team has proved adept at turning its caustic eye to many a subjects, not always with a sporting angle.
Earlier this week, one of Deadspin's writers, Barry Petchesky, was fired for apparently not "sticking to sports," sparking a mass of resignations from the site's other writers.
On Thursday morning, Magary announced he would be joining the growing number leaving the publication.
If you're not familiar with Magary by name, you might have come across his annual NFL preseason series, "Why Your Team Sucks," in which he pulls no punches providing fans with the most pessimistic take on their team's chances.
No team is spared, not least Magary's own beloved Vikings, about whom he wrote, "This team exists to disgust me," as he watched them fail at home to the Bears in the last game of the 2018 season, while he himself was recovering from a subdural hematoma.
Born in Australia, Magary's family left when he was just a few months old and moved a lot across the northern United States while he was growing up, though he spent the longest spell of his childhood in Minnesota, unfortunately staying long enough to become a Minnesota sports fan.
At Deadspin, he didn't just write about sports, with one of his most popular stories being his 2018 "Hater's Guide to the Williams Sonoma Catalog."
He's also been an outspoken critic of rival website Barstool Sports, which he called out for taking and sharing content without permission or attribution.