Shaun Kings Fundraising Called Into Question Again in Expos Report

marzo 18, 2022 Publicar un comentario

Due westhen Shaun King and progressive journalist Benjamin Dixon launched an ambitious multimedia reboot of Frederick Douglass' abolitionist paper, The N Star, last February, it was celebrated beyond social media past prominent voices, including Susan Sarandon, Michael Eric Dyson, and Megan Mullally. A month later, the company boasted on Twitter that it already had "multiple angel investors" and more than 30,000 subscribers contributing $5 per month for students and $ten a month and upwards for the full general public.

Subscribers at the highest giving levels, according to one former employee I spoke with, included Sigourney Weaver, Brené Brown, and black billionaire philanthropist Robert Smith, who gave a good for you $10,000 a calendar month. If every single subscriber gave at the everyman $v a calendar month "pupil programme" level, subscriber revenue totaled more than $125,000 monthly, or $1.5 1000000 a year, per figures tweeted by both King and The Northward Star.

"Call up—this is not simply the cost of membership—we are going to exist building multiple studios and offices and will exist hiring well-nigh 50 earth class journalists and staffers for The North Star," King wrote in a fundraising letter last Nov. "We are going to be launching a full news website, an iPhone & Android app, iv make new podcasts, online video news broadcasts, and then much more. Nosotros are building The Northward Star together."

But fourteen months after launching, almost none of what King promised to build has appeared and the site has struggled with issues that alienated many subscribers. The headquarters and idiot box studio was quietly shuttered concluding summer, and all Atlanta-based staffers laid off. The mobile app disappeared for over a yr, and the "total news site" displays branded The North Star apparel for sale alongside relatively scant original journalism.

King told me in an all-encompassing email exchange for this story in early April that The North Star'due south stumbles, including the dearth of deliverables promised, tin can exist chalked up to the same overzealousness that has been the downfall of his other projects—the result of his tendency to take on besides much, as well shortly.

"When we launched The North Star, most every advisor I had insisted that we should not do written manufactures, podcasts, and video news at the same time," King wrote. "I just knew we could do it. They were right."

But seven former employees of The Due north Star—iii of whom spoke anonymously out of fright of reprisal past King, and six of whom were told they had to sign nondisclosure agreements to receive severances—said the event was less King's over-ambition than his absenteeism, insistence on absolute control, and radical incompetence. They said he had little interest in feedback from staffers he had ostensibly brought on for their lengthy résumés and media feel, despite his own lack of the same. Two iterations of circulate news shows were scrapped, and their staffs and hosts fired, before they ever aired, and Dixon was pushed out even equally coin poured in and the site remained underpopulated.

It's well documented that King—one of Bernie Sanders' most prominent surrogates in both 2016 and 2020—has used his social-media platforms to garner national headlines for stories of racial injustice that would probable have otherwise been neglected or ignored. The outrage and media attending that followed King'southward sharing of graphic and horrific footage of Ahmaud Arbery, a immature blackness man, beingness gunned down in February by 2 white men, was the catalyst for Georgia constabulary enforcement to finally arrest the killers. In 2017, King successfully crowdsourced the identities of at least two of the white racists who brutally assaulted DeAndre Harris during the Unite the Correct rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Every bit those headlines accept raised his profile, King has continued to raise money, including through a Patreon fundraising campaign launched this April—again requesting $5 per month from students, $ten and up from general public subscribers—to turn The Breakdown podcast into a "daily video news broadcast." Disquisitional observers were quick to bespeak out that King's earlier fundraising letters for The North Star had likewise promised subscription fees would underwrite "daily online video news broadcasts." In the letter of the alphabet announcing the relaunch, King explicitly asked contributors to the original The North Star fundraiser to also get monthly paying subscribers to a live broadcast version of a podcast that'south office of The North Star, a project that was already funded, per King's own tweets, in Feb 2019. "Before nosotros denote this to the public," King wrote in the e-mail, "we want the original Breakup Crew to join u.s.a.."

The announcement of the new crowdfunding campaign revived rumors that have swirled on social media since it showtime launched that The Due north Star is more of a money-making maneuver than the "fully contained, unbought, unbossed media company focused on freedom" Male monarch had promised.

It has also fueled long-standing accusations—primarily lodged by black women and queer folks, nearly all of whom are his former co-organizers, colleagues, employees, and supporters—that Rex has inflated, mismanaged, or failed to account for funds he's raised for various social-justice causes.

While it should be noted that no criminal or civil charges accept ever been filed confronting Rex, the story—in the words of former employees of The Northward Star—was one of "cocky sabotage" past him, and "actually shady fucking business organization" with "a liar & a fraud."

'Questions That Remain Unanswered'

The #ShaunKingLetMeDown hashtag, a recurring Twitter trending topic, is often used to tag threads that enumerate the problems with the many projects Rex has launched, fundraised for, so abruptly close down earlier completion. The listing includes a 2011 fundraiser to climb mountains, abandoned four days into preparation, per King's own volume; a 2014 fundraiser for King'southward Life Goals Academy; and a crowdsourced fund paying for tips leading to the identification of neo-Nazis.

Members of Justice Together, the anti-constabulary-brutality grouping King pulled the plug on in 2015, posted an open letter accusing him of gross mismanagement. Days afterwards, members of another group he formed co-signed their own open letter making similar accusations. In 2019, a broad coalition of activists from organizations, including Black Lives Thing, Socialist Party The states, Ferguson Response Network, and Veterans of Foreign Wars, signed a post tagged #SitDownShaun stating that "in the past 4 years, Male monarch has launched several efforts, all of which failed or faded away without explanation… Each of these efforts had substantial monetary investment from both community and donors with questions that remain unanswered to this day."

Last year, King responded to the sustained calls for greater transparency effectually his personal finances and fundraising totals past issuing a 72-page report compiled by an "expert review panel" made up of seven people with close business and personal ties to him that he says details "every penny" he has raised for social-justice causes dating back to 2014, a figure he puts at $34.5 million.

"Information technology's hard to quantify or put a dollar value on what they've done, simply I do and so without hesitation."

But most of that money, $20.8 million, is based on a 2018 fundraiser created by Charlotte and Dave Willner to benefit the immigrant advancement group RAICES. While King promoted the fundraiser to his followers via social media, "information technology'due south definitively false that whatsoever boosting he did was responsible for the amount of coin that was raised," Dave Willner told me. "We tracked growth pretty carefully—I was graphing information technology, in some cases, minute past minute. We have all the information. This isn't my opinion. It definitely wasn't him."

"We had 22 volunteers in our living room at 1 point," Charlotte Willner told me. "Shaun was non one of them... Any ane person taking credit for it is antithetical to what nosotros were trying to do."

Asked about the Willners' claims, King writes, "To this day, multiple staff members from RAICES have full unfiltered access to my Twitter and Facebook pages. They are my close friends. And they have used my pages hundreds of times to amplify countless fundraisers, petitions, news stories, and more. They have had access for several years now and use my pages almost daily. Information technology'southward difficult to quantify or put a dollar value on what they've done, only I do so without hesitation."

This is, essentially, a reiteration of Rex's response to questions raised by activist DeRay McKesson. Just yet close Male monarch is to RAICES employees, the fundraiser he claims credit for, the largest in Facebook's history to that betoken, wasn't launched past the arrangement or its staffers simply by the Willners on their behalf. When I pointed this out and again asked for comment, Male monarch did not respond.

Male monarch besides did non answer to my question almost the report'due south omission of a $17,500 grant to Justice Together, the anti-police-brutality organization he disbanded in 2015. King cited the grant in this Facebook post from 2015 and in emails he sent to Justice Together board members the same year. The money is farther confirmed by a 2015 IRS filing from the Proteus Fund, the grant-giving organization.

(Male monarch noted in a Medium post that he never filed taxes for Justice Together "because every dollar that was given online was returned." The IRS revoked its tax-exempt status in 2018, iii years after the arrangement had been dissolved by King.)

King's auditors wrote that when he abruptly and unilaterally shuttered Justice Together in 2015, he "refunded 100% of the donations fabricated." Just a representative from the Proteus Fund, which provided the $17,500 grant, told me that King never returned that coin. Nor did he submit the mandated written report explaining how the funds were used to support justice work. King did non respond to a question near that disparity.

Also omitted from the report is a $ten,000 donation made to Justice Together by David Heinemeier Hansson, a former member of the organization's board, which he told me "had no resemblance to whatever legitimate board in terms of responsibilities and insight." Hansson resigned from the organization in Nov 2015.

"I would want to know where information technology went," Hansson says. "Shaun promised me accounts on spending. Never arrived. I just chalked information technology upwards to, 'OK, well I'chiliad simply non going to get involved in any more of that with him.' That doesn't mean the causes that he's pushing aren't worthy of support. It'due south simply that mayhap he shouldn't exist the one collecting or belongings the piggy bank."

Rex did non respond to a question about the missing $10,000; in 2019, he wrote that Justice Together was "an experimental idea, launched in good religion, that I only could not finer manage. I privately owned this failure and I publicly own the failure today."

"The lessons that I learned from those early on failures in 2014 & 2015 are the very things that brand the work I practice now at Real Justice, at The North Star, at The Activity PAC, and with our Flip the Senate campaign so effective."

According to the auditors he selected to go through his finances, King received "absolutely no compensation, straight or indirectly, from the tens of millions of dollars that he has helped to enhance for families in crisis during this five year menses of our review," with the exception of "a minor income of $4,166 per calendar month" from his work with Real Justice PAC. They likewise write that they "reviewed Shaun's full tax returns filed jointly with his spouse" for a time menstruation including 2013—though tax filings for that year are inexplicably omitted from their written report.

"The inconsistencies and lies become actually clear. Information technology merely doesn't add together up. "

But an IRS filing from that same twelvemonth for HopeMob, the crowdfunding site that King established in 2012, shows that he was paid more than $160,000 for tax year 2013 every bit CEO of the organization, well-nigh xl percent of the funds it raised that year. Rex did not respond to questions almost the discrepancy between IRS documents and his previous argument that he was paid that coin "over a menstruum of a few years."

King promoted the release of the report across social media, including with paid ads on Facebook. When McKesson accused Rex of using money from Existent Justice PAC and Activity PAC—funds that "are supposed to exist going to support electing prosecutors across the state and fighting racism, respectively"—to pay for his self-promotion, Male monarch denied the charge in a lengthy Medium article.

"Information technology was $iii and was done and so in error," King wrote. "It was stopped immediately when it was discovered. It was reimbursed immediately."

But according to Facebook's Folio Transparency summaries, which provide totals for advertisement expenditures, that's not accurate. In fact, the site shows at that place were three different ad buys—ii paid for by King's Existent Justice PAC and one by his Action PAC—totaling a minimum of $1,300. Those are relatively small ad expenditures, which is why it seems odd that Male monarch would choose not only to address them at all, but likewise to offer a rebuttal that'south and so hands undercut by discoverable evidence. Male monarch did not answer to a question well-nigh the discrepancy.

"When people actually engage with the facts and inquire questions instead of defending by support of Shaun, the inconsistencies and lies become really clear. It just doesn't add up," McKesson wrote me. "In organizing, it's disquisitional that we model the blazon of community we aim to build—1 fundamentally rooted in reducing, not increasing, harm. That means not allowing people to exploit crises past repeatedly promising to exercise things and then not following through."

As King has used his expansive platform to bring attention to racist violence overlooked by mainstream outlets, he has too been defendant of turning his post-obit—more than four.5 million followers across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—against his detractors, and of retaliating nigh harshly and publicly against those without the ways or resource to fight back.

That accuse gained deeper traction last twelvemonth when King issued lawsuit threats against two young, blackness and queer activists who'd tweeted skeptically about his fundraising. After critics, primarily on black Twitter and in black media outlets, called out his threats, issued afterward the activists had already deleted their tweets, Rex penned and posted a lengthy apology.

The previous year, Rex made headlines when he misidentified the killer of Jazmine Barnes—a 7-twelvemonth-erstwhile blackness girl murdered in what initially appeared to exist a racist drive-by shooting—in a tweet that went viral. While Male monarch eventually erased the message, the homo'southward family told a news outlet that tearing threats poured in even subsequently two different suspects were arrested. The human being King wrongly identified reportedly committed suicide in his cell several months later, later on he had been jailed on unrelated charges. As of this writing, Male monarch has non publicly apologized for or retracted his merits about the killer's identity.

"If this was something that had happened with right-wingers, everybody would be pointing and trying to effigy out how to get some type of accountability."

Every bit a high-profile Bernie Sanders surrogate this year, a role he also played in 2016, King came nether fire for repeatedly propagating messages of questionable authenticity and reliability. Rachel Maddow took to Twitter to discredit a Super Tuesday tweet from King claiming that the MSNBC host had reported "multiple 'senior officials' within the Democratic Political party are interfering with the primaries to stop" Sanders' campaign." ("No," Maddow responded tersely. "I didn't report any such thing.") A month subsequently, after Male monarch pointedly asked Sen. Brian Schatz—a co-sponsor of Sanders' Medicare for All Act of 2019 Senate pecker—if he supported the proposition, the legislator sent a curt reply: "I don't know why you are tweeting this like some sort of gotcha but I am a cosponsor of the bill."

Anoa Changa, a lawyer, progressive podcaster, and grassroots organizer for Sanders' 2016 campaign, provided pro bono legal guidance to one of the activists King threatened to sue. Changa says that upon learning King was again existence considered for a 2020 surrogate part, she shared concerns with Winnie Wong, the entrada's senior political adviser.

"Having someone drift their way so high upwards is deeply disconcerting, particularly with his history of turning on activists," Changa told me. "Just because people have had what announced to be good results doesn't mean that nosotros still shouldn't question the method they used to get there, particularly in this moment, when we have issues with disinformation and making sure nosotros're getting adept content. If this was something that had happened with correct-wingers, everybody would be pointing and trying to effigy out how to get some type of accountability."

Just the controversies surrounding Male monarch have done little to diminish his status amongst loftier-profile admirers. Last year, he was honored with an honour at Rihanna's Diamond Ball. His Real Justice PAC is supported in part by Cari Tuna, the married woman of Dustin Moskovitz, ane of Facebook'south iii co-founders whose names most people don't know. At Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign kickoff result in Brooklyn, King delivered the keynote. And his almost recent book, Make Change, features a foreword by Sanders, as well as glowing blurbs from Rep. Rashida Tlaib, music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs, and soccer star Megan Rapinoe.

"He has a lot of black celebrities on board who aren't particularly dialed into the activist community, but when money is needed, they're more than than happy to throw coin at a problem. That's fantastic. I'1000 non asking that much from Rihanna—she'south a decorated woman and I'm glad and so many black celebrities are willing to put their money where their mouths are," Imani Gandy, an attorney and journalist who has been 1 of Rex's nearly vocal critics on social media, told me.

"But at that place are too white liberals who want someone or something they tin can give their money to (equally if that) washes abroad all of your sins, and absolves y'all of whatsoever requirements to practice whatever self-reflection, to exercise anything that would make you sympathize that you need to exist helping people at a grassroots level, non merely giving money to one guy who you probably never really researched. He makes white folk feel rubber considering he doesn't inquire anything of them also giving money—he sells wokeness to white people."

Rex has consistently said that he has "never received, held, touched, managed, or fifty-fifty had admission to any money I've always raised," often pointing to outsize ambitions that overwhelmed his administrative capabilities, as when he told The Daily Fauna in 2015 that his accusers "need to sympathise that failure is not fraud." (Equally someone who never finished a book projection that friends crowdfunded 10 years agone, I understand the general sentiment.)

"There are levels of disharmonize built into what he is doing. In that location'due south this lack of accountability for these well-funded projects that don't necessarily deliver," says Changa.

"Startups are hard. Nigh of us, though, exercise not become to do multiple startups, and fail, and mismanage coin, or spiral people over, and go on doing it, and so become national platforms for presidential candidates. Only because it's someone who's the white liberal favorite, it's a completely different story."

'I Would Never Have Done It the Mode We Did It'

As of this writing, The Northward Star website features the ii podcasts starring King, branded wearing apparel for sale, and scant original journalism. The outlet'south iv near-read articles, co-ordinate to its homepage—Bailiwick of jersey City shooting Suspect Linked to Black Hebrew Israelite movement, Cyberbanking While Blackness: Old NFL Thespian and Banking concern Employee Betrayal Racism At JPMorgan, Immigration Rights Grouping Sues Ice to Restore Immigrant Hotline, Soccer is Plagued By Racism All Over the World, and Brazil Is No Exception—were all published last December.

Despite King'southward promotion of the site and the money it'south raised, a Google search for "north star" shows information technology at the bottom of the second page of results, behind almost a dozen articles about the star Polaris and results for the Due north Star Fund, "a social-justice fund that supports grassroots organizing led past communities of colour," the Northward Star Group, a financial-planning company, and Due north Star Teens, "an culling to school where teens larn in the fashion that suits them best."

"Straight [out] of the gate, nosotros quickly learned that it was too much for our new staff, in multiple states, to manage," King emailed. "Again, almost every advisor nosotros had told our team not to start out the company with an office in multiple states. Nosotros did it anyway. They strongly advised us to not exercise that until our company was a few years sometime. They were right. It was but too hard to manage… We've now written nearly 2,000 articles from dozens of writers in our offset yr, and accept had a lot of success with our podcasts, but if I could practise it all over again, I would never have done it the way we did it. We should have started with simply i sectionalization, nailed it, similar completely nailed information technology, and grew from there."

King's co-founder Benjamin Dixon, according to multiple former employees, was sincerely committed to The Due north Star's progressive political vision far across the clicks and likes it might garner. In fact, Dixon had envisioned the "blueprint" for The North Star years before the company was launched, just lacked the name recognition and capital to make the project happen.

"People don't want to fund us the same way. We're not pulling downwards Chapo Trap Business firm money," Changa, who was brought on as a consultant on the news circulate that never happened, told me. "In the scope of independent leftist media, you see things similar The Majority Report, or Dave Pakman or Thom Hartmann. Information technology's very white and it'south very male. Nosotros saw a real need for blackness progressives to have practiced conversations about political issues in context. This was something for years that Ben had been trying to get off the ground. And finally, he had developed a relationship with Shaun."

Rex's fundraising helped provide money for those ambitions. The crowdfunding stage was followed past the build-out of The North Star's Atlanta studio and hub. Early iterations of The Due north Star site included video of the soundstage existence constructed alongside the avowal, "We purchased and completely renovated our ain television set studio then that we could broadcast the news to you daily."

Just King, according to one former employee I spoke with who was familiar with The North Star's back stop, unilaterally fabricated decisions on things he knew little near. "He doesn't offer explanations," the staffer told me. "Just generally, he makes a decision and then everybody scrambles to fix information technology."

"At that point, we no longer trusted the actuality of this endeavour."

—

A onetime employee of The North Star

The website was besieged with problems from the very beginning. In November 2018, while the project was even so crowdfunding before its official site launch, Male monarch sent a fundraising letter implying that dark forces were already trying to take information technology down, writing, "we've been under attack all twenty-four hours, with hackers deliberately crashing the website with DDOS attacks four different times… Conspicuously people know what we're building is going to brand a major affect."

But according to ii people familiar with the site's back end and the problems that plagued information technology, there were no significant outside attacks. The trouble was the site's shoddy construction.

Along with a host of smaller issues, like having no way for members to reset their own password, members were sometimes double-charged, undercharged, or not charged at all—bug requiring constant fixes, one former employee said. Co-ordinate to that same staffer, there was no terms-and-conditions form, a serious problem for a visitor that collects money from people via credit carte du jour. Male monarch did non respond when I asked him about this.

When beta testing of The Due north Star app concluded terminal April, King—the liaison between the company's Information technology contractors and its internal support staff—neglected to inform both and its subscriber base and his ain employees, who then had to respond to complaints from dislocated supporters. For more than a yr, there was no app for The North Star, which had been i of the central pieces of collateral promised during the fundraising phase. King told me in early on April that new versions of both an iPhone and Android app were "awaiting approval in each App Store." The North Star app finally became available in belatedly May.

About a calendar month after the beta version of the app was pulled, a back-end problem led to many subscribers being undercharged or not charged at all. Once the error was caught, King was advised by support staff not to charge those subscribers earlier sending out an email asking explicit permission. There were reasons for that: to avoid opening The Due north Star to legal hazard—since members had, technically, not agreed to any terms and conditions—and to avoid blindsiding members who might exist financially unprepared for a random charge on a appointment they hadn't planned for.

"I was somewhat invested in the membership, our community, because I'd been communicating with them, and hearing people's stories," a former employee told me. "Like, 'I'm a student, I don't have much, but I want to support this cause.' Or 1 member who had to cancel considering their firm burned down, and they moved into a new business firm and a couple of months afterwards they rejoined. I wanted to protect The North Star, but I also felt like it was my responsibility to treat their memberships."

But after 4 p.g. on the Friday earlier Memorial 24-hour interval weekend 2019, against the communication of his staff—and without their cognition, the employee says—King sent a mass electronic mail from the back up-staff account informing members they would exist charged, according to 1 former employee. Among the recipients were roughly 1,000 people who had already canceled their The Northward Star memberships. When aroused complaints broadsided support staffers on their mode out the door for the long weekend ("Some of them were cussing," the employee recalls), the employee pleaded with Male monarch to send an email countering the first letter, and promising that back up staff would be in touch with members to get permission first.

King sent an apologetic follow-up email from his "personal" account, writing, "our team only sent out the below email about our brand new payment processing system… but I wanted to write to you to let you know that I've asked the team to hold off on any charges for missed payments until we confirm that you directly canonical the missed charge. Once again, no charges will be made without your expressed permission." Support staffers felt like Male monarch had thrown them under the bus, but felt the decision to concur off was a pocket-size victory. Less than a week later, without any alert, King went alee and charged those member accounts.

"At that bespeak," the employee told me, "we no longer trusted the actuality of this effort."

Asked virtually the incident, King wrote, "Last May our company transitioned from i payment processing visitor to another. It was an amazingly difficult and clunky migration process. I consulted a number of experts in the field on how to best do it—including best practices in the infinite. When we realized that some customers were not charged for their monthly fees, we made those charges as soon every bit we could. Again, our small company lives month to month without exterior investors. Our only income at that time was our monthly fees."

'Be Your Best Black Self'

In December 2018, Rebecca Azor and Valeria Sistrunk were hired to anchor The North Star's video news prove, The N Star Today. For eight weeks pre-launch, under Dixon's management, they shot mock episodes of the broadcast that were then sent to New York for review past Male monarch, who they say never visited the Atlanta studio during their employment. Azor says that while Dixon "was doing half dozen jobs," Male monarch—despite his inexpertise in broadcasting—merely sent highly disquisitional, vague, and dismissive critiques of their work through his co-founder, rarely communicating with the anchors directly or responding to their questions. Both say King demanded changes that differed by the solar day, requesting output far beyond the upkeep and capabilities of a small, understaffed, scrappy startup.

"I guess what was really frustrating to me was that Shaun had a lot of unrealistic expectations," Sistrunk, a former news ballast, told me. "He had this skeleton coiffure but wanted to brand this huge cable network show. No one could reason with him or explicate to him that his expectations were too high. Information technology was nigh like cocky-demolition."

"He sent us an email, and he said, 'I don't know, y'all guys [are] non beingness true to yourself. Only recall to be your best black cocky,'" Azor told me, noting that she saw the message as a asking to be a stereotypically "blacker" version of themselves. "We all found it offensive. At the finish of the day, my codes switch all 24-hour interval. I tin go from here to in that location. When I exercise my job, I practise my job. Period. But at present you're telling me to be my best black cocky? What does that mean? I'yard like, 'Please don't. You're projecting. Nosotros're black. Stop.'"

I asked King what he meant in his message, which included the line, "Be your best, of form, but be your best Black self." King responded, "I had a few conversations with our staff almost how being Black in white dominated, white owned, white managed media spaces frequently ways that being 'professional' means leaving multiple elements of your Black and civilisation at the door. In that email, and over the past year, I've continued to communicate to our staff, which is 95% Black and Latino, and 65% women, that we don't have to practice that at The North Star. Nosotros can speak with our linguistic communication, with our vocabulary, that we can use our stories and illustrations, that we can speak with our full range of emotions, from acrimony to joy, and do and then without hesitation."

Azor and Sistrunk were fired in January 2019, before The North Star even launched. The second iteration of the daily news bear witness, co-hosted past Dixon and local Atlanta news figure JaQuitta Williams, began exam shoots just later on the site went live. A new grouping of production staffers were brought in. Aisha Westbrook, one of those new employees, says King's absenteeism, along with poor communication and disregard for feedback, created an atmosphere of "defoliation." Another former employee told me that subsequently King launched his podcast in April, much of his attention was diverted from The North Star to his solo production.

"Everybody believed in what we were trying to do," Westbrook told me. "I think if Shaun would have been downwardly there, would have been nowadays, I think it would have been a lot more effective every bit far as beingness able to pick out what it is that he was wanting to be seen and what kind of stories [he] wanted to be told and the actual look and feel of the testify."

At to the lowest degree as tardily equally June 2019, The North Star site falsely included the message, "Our first tv set circulate in our new studio is after today!" Instead, the second version of the news show and a planned docuseries were scrapped before they ever aired, and most of the associated staffers laid off.

Several ex-employees told me that during this period, Dixon was ousted by Rex and muzzled with an NDA as part of the settlement bargain. (Dixon declined to comment for this article aside from briefly citing "creative differences" for his exit, and Rex did not answer to a question nigh the terms of his departure.)

Greg R. Jackson, who survived that cut, says that in the summer of 2019, The North Star flew him and one other production staffer to New York. The two were tasked with creating a photographic camera setup in King'southward podcast studio that would permit The Due north Star CEO to single-handedly record his podcast existence made. This new plan concept—a broadcast version of Rex's podcast, The Breakdown—is essentially the project King is currently fundraising for. Inside iii months of Jackson's render to Atlanta, he and Westbrook would both be laid off, but days earlier they say their health-care benefits were due to kick in. Similar all but ane of The Northward Star employees I spoke to, they told me they were informed that severance packages were contingent upon signing NDAs.

"There are a lot of people that are civilization vultures who say that they're doing stuff for the betterment of people. But really, this is but how you pay your bills."

"It was just a little strange. We had but finished the paperwork to get our medical benefits, literally perchance that Friday, before nosotros got laid off," Jackson told me. "After I got laid off, I was instructed that we could get some actress pay if nosotros signed some papers, and I declined that because I felt like, 'Why should I sign some papers for $ii,000 or whatever it was for my freedom of speech? What are you trying to hide?' I have nix negative to say about [Male monarch] every bit a person, but the way he handled business was a little odd to me."

"It'southward merely a whole bunch of actually shady fucking business concern, is what that felt like," another former staffer told me. "I was promised health care and I never received health insurance. I started asking, 'Listen, when is this going to happen? Are you going to reimburse me for the cost of having to get my own health insurance?' I retrieve I was the only person who got any money for health-care costs, after advocating for months."

King rejected any link between layoffs and health-intendance benefits, writing, "One didn't have anything to do with the other. We accept more people covered under our health insurance plans, 100% of our staff, than we ever have in the 1 yr history of our young company. In fact, any fourth dimension we've let an employee go, nosotros've offered at least 1 month of severance and have covered health insurance for upward to 3 additional months for several employees that we allow go. Every employee of The Due north Star has the full cost of their health insurance paid for them, and their families. We also have a robust paid sick leave policy, holiday twenty-four hours policy, mental-wellness day policy, and more than."

King did non respond when I asked if severance packages were contingent upon signing NDAs.

"There are a lot of people that are culture vultures who say that they're doing stuff for the betterment of people," Westbrook told me when we talked. "But actually, this is only how you pay your bills."

'Just Funding His Ego at This Bespeak'

Co-ordinate to Azor, when rumors surfaced a calendar month after launch that The North Star was in trouble and in that location had already been layoffs, Male monarch flew to the Atlanta offices for a rare visit and staged this photograph with remaining employees. The same day, The Due north Star Twitter account sent a message calling the reports "fabrications" and stating, "Because of the generous support of nigh xxx,000+ members & the backing of multiple angel investors — @TheNorthStar has cash reserves to fund our operation deep into 2020."

Just virtually four months after that, the rest of the Atlanta staff was laid off without warning and the offices closed. A number of employees told me the cuts were particularly surprising since staffers had been told the company was gearing upwards for a new membership button, only as King tells potential subscribers in this fundraising video that remained on The N Star site until late November, long after the Atlanta offices were closed.

"It was our single biggest expense, both monthly and total cost," King wrote me nigh the Atlanta part, "and we had to make a tough decision to shut it. I don't remember nosotros could've survived another calendar month had we not done so."

King continued, "When we launched The North Star we did so without $ane in start upwards funding or any loans or credit cards. That sounds noble. It is noble. But ultimately we struggled to build the systems, structures, infrastructure, teams, staff to manage three split divisions of articles, podcasts, and video in twelvemonth 1. It nigh killed the company to endeavour to do it."

"I wish him the best, only I'd never be led astray by somebody'southward social media post-obit ever over again."

But but four months prior to the shutdown of operations in Atlanta, King had tweeted that the visitor had "over 28,000+ founding members" signed to monthly subscriptions of $five per month for students and $10 and up for the general public, though a quondam employee told me the majority of subscribers paid "at least $x a calendar month." At the very minimum, 28,000 educatee members would mean that The North Star was bringing in $140,000 a calendar month for a company with just "22 total-time staff members" per Male monarch's own tweet—rather than the "50 earth-form journalists and staffers" promised during fundraising.

In April, King emailed me that electric current membership levels are now at "about 12,000," and that the "boilerplate fellow member is now [contributing] at the $5 level" per month. That conflicts with information on The Northward Star website, which still touts "over 25,000 members," every bit well equally a fundraiser letter King sent merely two weeks prior to his correspondence with me, in which he stated that "our boilerplate member gives at the $25 a month level."

If what King said in the email to me is authentic, that would mean that The N Star is pulling in at least $60,000 a month. If what he said in the fundraising letter of the alphabet is accurate, that would mean that The Due north Star is pulling in $625,000 a calendar month.

The visitor now employs just fourteen employees, King wrote me. Ane of those employees appears to be King's wife, Rai King, whom The N Star site at different times has variously identified as the company's master operating officer and as its operations manager.

"He seems to be a genuine guy and all that stuff, but you go off of how people care for you lot, not what they say or how it looks on IG, because I could paint myself as a beautiful human being on IG, too," Jackson told me. "You know what it all boils downward to? How did you handle the people that gave you their all? I wish him the best, but I'd never exist led astray by somebody'southward social-media post-obit and all that stuff ever again."

"Shaun and the word 'accountability' should never appear in the same sentence," The North Star's one-time editor in chief, Keisha N. Blain—who one former employee told me was King'southward staunchest ally at the company—wrote in a tweet thread. "So many people warned me about him and I didn't listen. But I learned through experience—not rumours or innuendos just real life experience with a liar & a fraud."

Blain went on to write that she was "thinking of financial matters when I wrote the tweet (since he has always framed them every bit rumours and non facts)," and added that there "is nothing to celebrate nigh my collaboration with Shaun and The Due north Star. It was a f*cked up state of affairs from first to end. And there'south a lot I just cannot say because I signed an NDA. I am merely owning my shit and trying to exercise better and move frontwards. That's all."

Blain declined to comment for this article, citing the aforementioned NDA, only wrote, "I will just confirm that I am no longer associated with The Northward Star and deeply regret my previous collaboration with Shaun King." Rex did not respond to questions nearly her departure.

2 one-time Atlanta employees I spoke with expressed astonishment that King's new fundraising announcement includes the boast that "nosotros have not had to permit a single employee go or even reduce their hours," which he may have meant every bit a reference to the coronavirus pandemic. Subscription dollars, King'southward letter of the alphabet promises potential donors, volition "allow us to go along our staff, and even rent new staff that have been fired from other companies over this by calendar month."

"Shaun is outright lying when he says he hasn't fired anyone," Azor wrote me. "He's gone through three unlike teams in a single yr, and I tin guarantee yous that non a single person who worked for him at The North Star has a positive thing to say about him as a leader, activist, or businessman. At present he's fundraising yet again for something he promised to evangelize years ago. Shaun is really only funding his ego at this indicate."

In addition to his new Patreon—which currently has more than than 2,200 subscribers—and weekly live broadcast, King announced his COVID-19 Help Squad in mid-March. Wary skeptics and critics tweeted their suspicions that the project was a scam, warning off potential supporters.

King has countered those accusations via social media, tweeting that he has no coronavirus fundraiser, and the COVID-19 Aid Squad has not directly solicited donations. But a March fundraising letter for Male monarch'due south Action PAC noted its goal was to "raise $28,000 in the next 5 days" partly to help "people in need due to COVID-nineteen." Rex did not respond to a question almost the Action PAC'south fundraising phone call, and how that related to the Help Squad.

Ii months subsequently its launch, Male monarch's COVID-19 Help Squad has just nether 400 Twitter followers, and cautionary reviews on its Facebook page explain the 2.ane rating. Just on Instagram, the project has amassed more than 30,000 followers, pointing to the indelible power of King's platform, despite all critiques.

"Y'all're naming something after Frederick Douglass'south The North Star—that's the superlative," Changa told me. "There'south something so insidious about just taking the legacy of motion journalism. When we really look back at Ida B. Wells, at Frederick Douglass, The Chicago Defender, The Amsterdam News, nosotros have then much history and excellence in this lane, and nosotros're so defective in political discourse and commentary through this particular progressive lens that is centered effectually blackness. And this was such a missed opportunity."

In an Instagram video posted in early May well-nigh his work drawing attention to Arbery's murder, King said that people questioning his integrity "stresses out the families of the victims [he] fights for."

In his written comment posted with that video, Male monarch stated that "I Practice Non Take A Salary" at Action PAC. "I make money to feed my family in iv primary ways. 1) from the media company I founded ii) from the books I write 3) speaking engagements and four) consulting work."

He continued, "I have never received a penny I've raised for families or causes. To say I take is an outright and unfounded prevarication.

"Please know that I answer these charges not for the haters, but for you to know & understand the amount of thought and try that goes into this piece of work. The Activeness PACs filings are PUBLIC."

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Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/shaun-king-keeps-raising-money-and-questions-about-where-it-goes-3