Bernie Sanders shared his support for former Deadspin staffers after they resigned in protest over order to 'stick to sports'

Brian Snyder/Reuters

Sen. Bernie Sanders speaks at a campaign rally in Dover, New Hampshire, on September 1, 2019.

• 2020 Democratic hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted out his support for workers at the sports website Deadspin after many of its reporters quit en masse in response to an editorial disagreement between G/O executives and the staff, which led to the firing of former deputy editor Barry Petchesky.
• In a tweet on Thursday evening, Sanders said he stood with the workers who resigned from the company and "decided not to bow to the greed of private equity vultures." 
• Some of the workers who left Deadspin responded positively to the tweet. 
• "Welp, that settles my vote," said former Deadspin writer Albert Burneko. 
• Sanders has touted election plans to reform the media industry and help journalists unionize.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted out his support for workers at Deadspin, the G/O Media-owned sports blog that saw many of its reporters quit en masse this week after former deputy editor Barry Petchesky was fired from the company. 

Petchesky was removed from his post after clashing with G/O executives, who sent out a memo to writers on Monday demanding that they "write only about sports and that which is relevant to sports in some way." The editorial staff, led by Petchesky, defied the order by placing all of their non-sports coverage prominently on the site Tuesday.

By Thursday, Deadspin was down over a dozen staff members. 

In a tweet on Thursday evening, Sanders said he stood with the writers who resigned from the company over the feud. 

"I stand with the former @Deadspin workers who decided not to bow to the greed of private equity vultures like @JimSpanfeller," he wrote. 

Jim Spanfeller, referenced in Sanders' tweet, is the CEO of G/O media. The former writers and editors have called out Spanfeller and private equity firm Great Hill Partners for their management of the media company.

"This is not what journalism looks like and it is not what editorial independence looks like," the GMG union said in a statement on Wednesday. "'Stick to sports' is and always has been a thinly veiled euphemism for 'don't speak truth to power.' In addition to being bad business, Spanfeller's actions are morally reprehensible."

Some of the workers that left Deadspin responded positively to Sanders' tweet. 

Former Deadspin writer Albert Burneko, said Sanders' tweet cinched his 2020 vote. 

Patrick Redford, also a former writer at Deadspin, retweeted Sanders' comments alongside some of his signature phrases about tackling the nation's wealthiest 1%.

Drew Magary, a former Deadspin columnist, simply tweeted "holy s--t." 

Former staff writer Kelsey McKinney tweeted out in puzzlement of the statement. 

Tom Ley, Laura Wagner, Chris Thompson, and Samer Kalaf, former journalists at Deadspin, retweeted Sanders.

Sanders has previously touted election plans to reform the media industry and protect independent journalists. In an op-ed for the Columbia Journalism Review in August, Sanders pledged to combat the Trump administration's attempts to make mergers between large-scale media companies more likely.

"In my administration, we are going to institute an immediate moratorium on approving mergers of major media corporations until we can better understand the true effect these transactions have on our democracy," Sanders wrote. 

Sanders has also proposed The Workplace Democracy Plan, which seeks to boost media workers abilities unionize in order to fight for fair wages, benefits, and protection for reporters who speak out against media owners and their advertisers. 

"We can and will restore the media that Joseph Pulitzer and Walter Cronkite envisioned, and that America so desperately needs," he wrote.

In a statement provided to Business Insider earlier today regarding the mandate to write about sports, G/O media said that in September "24 of the top 25 stories on Deadspin" were sports stories.

"Given those facts, we simply believe it makes sense to focus attention and resources on even more sports coverage to serve our readers what they want," the statement continued. "While amusing, our readers haven't actually come to Deadspin for stories like 'Classic Rock, Ranked,' or 'You're Goddamn Right It's Layering Season,' or 'It's OK to Logoff.' Sports touches nearly every aspect of life. Our writers have a free hand to cover the intersection of sports and politics, sports and pop culture, sports and business, or, frankly, just about any topic even tangentially related to sports."

The former writers dispute this claim. "FYI this is demonstrably false. According to our analytics department, since the start of the year, non-sports posts have on average double the traffic of sports posts," Petchesky wrote on Twitter.