Interesting times at Deadspin, where new management is asking staffers to pivot away from politics and focus on sports instead.

Employees have griped openly about this, which is curiously defiant, yet understandable, since Deadspin has, well, combined sports, politics, and culture for a long time now. That’s exactly what the site has been for years, a left-leaning amalgam that tackles the topic of the day.

Management wants them to lean in no direction at all, sending a memo to employees Monday asking them to stick to sports. The Daily Beast obtained a copy of the memo from G/O Media editorial director Paul Maidment, which includes these nuggets:

“To create as much great sports journalism as we can requires a 100% focus of our resources on sports. And it will be the sole focus,” Maidment said. “Deadspin will write only about sports and that which is relevant to sports in some way.”

The top editorial leader at G/O—the new company overseeing Deadspin, Gizmodo, Jezebel, Lifehacker, and a number of former Gawker Media sites—told employees that stories with tie-ins to sports were permitted to run on the site but that they should leave non-sports stories to the company’s other websites.

“Where such subjects touch on sports, they are fair game for Deadspin. Where they do not, they are not,” Maidment wrote. “We have plenty of other sites that write about politics, pop culture, the arts, and the rest, and they’re the appropriate place for such work.”

Seems like a weird strategy to me. I’m pretty sure Deadspin does better traffic on some of their political stories and random culture pieces, like Dan McQuade’s visit with the 28-pound chonky cat. Surely Billy Haisley’s shitty and lazy MLS articles aren’t paying the bills, are they?

Here’s some info on that from a guy who used to work there:

Right, so this internal strife manifested itself in a post from editors explaining that they were unhappy with auto-play video ads appearing on the site, a story that was then taken down. It’s a very public and messy struggle, and Portnoy over at rival Barstool is having fun with it, writing this last night:

Now I see both sides here. I agree that autoplay ads are annoying for the readers, but when you declare bankruptcy every other month it’s kind of hard to complain about anything that your boss is trying to do to generate revenue and pay your salaries. If you don’t like your job that much than just quit and go find another one. But at the same time I’m starting to be jealous of the fantasy land that Wags (Laura Wagner) and her crew live in. A world where you can publicly harass and ridicule your bosses, trash your advertisers all while expecting your boss to pay you for it. Wait Is this what a Union is for? Maybe I should be pro union after all.   That seems awesome!

Anyway as an olive branch to my good friends at Deadspin and in a sign of solidarity with the Deadspin Union I will publish any blog trashing Deadspin written by Deadspin employees that is getting deleted by the Deadspin owners. All you have to do is ask nicely Wags and my blog is your blog. How gallant is that?

It’s entertaining, if nothing else. I don’t know if “stick to sports” is in the best interest of Deadspin management, but they’re gonna give it a shot anyway, despite very vocal complaints from their employees.