Entry tags:
failing to change the world
Yesterday on Medium, Newton Schottelkotte (with editing by Tal Minear and Wil Williams) published Who's Afraid of Alex J. Newall?: The Layoffs, Lapses, and Lessons of Rusty Quill.
It's a disheartening and important read for fans of The Magnus Archives and other RQ shows.
RQ has always presented itself as a company dedicated to making podcasting, and the world, a bit better. In particular, RQ said it wanted to foster opportunities for new talent, for people with ideas but without experience and connections.
That doesn't seem to be what they've done. Schottelkotte's piece, based on interviews with present and former RQ staff and creators from RQ's network shows, plausibly shows RQ's business practices as a mix of incompetence and greed. Predatory contracts, misuse of NDAs and non-disparagement clauses, ridiculously bad accounting, communication so poor it seems actively hostile: it's all here. Far from creating opportunities for podcast creators, RQ has shut them out of interaction with other distributors and platforms, locked them into bad contracts, and skimmed outrageous percentages of their income.
I've been uncomfortable with what I've heard of RQ's business practices for a long time, and the recent layoffs made it worse. Even before that, I couldn't help wondering why so many people who'd been with RQ for a very long time didn't seem to want to keep working with them once their shows ended.
I didn't pledge to the Magnus Protocols Kickstarter because I had so many doubts. And now, I think I need to end my Patron support of RQ as well. (I almost did that a few months ago when the layoffs were first announced, but I waited because I didn't want to believe RQ could actually be that unethical.) It makes me really sad.
I'll probably still listen to the Magnus Protocols. I mean, I'm also still on Twitter. But, just as I'm trying to make my Twitter presence unprofitable for Elon Musk, I don't want to contribute financially to RQ any more than I can help.
I'm still hoping they can get their shit under control and do better. But they don't get more of my money until they do.
ETA: Rusty Quill's public response is here. Thanks to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rydra_wong for the link!
At this point I don't know what to believe. I've seen companies lie through their teeth against whistleblowers; I've also seen people and organizations (for instance, every trans person who's at all a public figure, and every organization that supports us) smeared via selective quoting, misinterpretation, anonymous sources, and bad-faith, willful misinterpretation. I hate to think someone would smear RQ just for profit or a grudge, but I know it happens. I also hate to think I would be one of those fans who denies accusations of wrongdoing by their beloved content-maker regardless of the evidence.
I guess what I would like to see is some genuine disclosure and transparency. Right now it's Schottelkotte's unsupported word (the sources are unverifiable because anonymous) vs. RQ's unsupported word (the actual policies and documents are undisclosed). What a fucking mess.
If the accusations of exploitation and predatory contracts turns out to be untrue, RQ really needs to learn some lessons from this about how to communicate, both internally and with fans.
It's a disheartening and important read for fans of The Magnus Archives and other RQ shows.
RQ has always presented itself as a company dedicated to making podcasting, and the world, a bit better. In particular, RQ said it wanted to foster opportunities for new talent, for people with ideas but without experience and connections.
That doesn't seem to be what they've done. Schottelkotte's piece, based on interviews with present and former RQ staff and creators from RQ's network shows, plausibly shows RQ's business practices as a mix of incompetence and greed. Predatory contracts, misuse of NDAs and non-disparagement clauses, ridiculously bad accounting, communication so poor it seems actively hostile: it's all here. Far from creating opportunities for podcast creators, RQ has shut them out of interaction with other distributors and platforms, locked them into bad contracts, and skimmed outrageous percentages of their income.
I've been uncomfortable with what I've heard of RQ's business practices for a long time, and the recent layoffs made it worse. Even before that, I couldn't help wondering why so many people who'd been with RQ for a very long time didn't seem to want to keep working with them once their shows ended.
I didn't pledge to the Magnus Protocols Kickstarter because I had so many doubts. And now, I think I need to end my Patron support of RQ as well. (I almost did that a few months ago when the layoffs were first announced, but I waited because I didn't want to believe RQ could actually be that unethical.) It makes me really sad.
I'll probably still listen to the Magnus Protocols. I mean, I'm also still on Twitter. But, just as I'm trying to make my Twitter presence unprofitable for Elon Musk, I don't want to contribute financially to RQ any more than I can help.
I'm still hoping they can get their shit under control and do better. But they don't get more of my money until they do.
ETA: Rusty Quill's public response is here. Thanks to
rydra_wong for the link! At this point I don't know what to believe. I've seen companies lie through their teeth against whistleblowers; I've also seen people and organizations (for instance, every trans person who's at all a public figure, and every organization that supports us) smeared via selective quoting, misinterpretation, anonymous sources, and bad-faith, willful misinterpretation. I hate to think someone would smear RQ just for profit or a grudge, but I know it happens. I also hate to think I would be one of those fans who denies accusations of wrongdoing by their beloved content-maker regardless of the evidence.
I guess what I would like to see is some genuine disclosure and transparency. Right now it's Schottelkotte's unsupported word (the sources are unverifiable because anonymous) vs. RQ's unsupported word (the actual policies and documents are undisclosed). What a fucking mess.
If the accusations of exploitation and predatory contracts turns out to be untrue, RQ really needs to learn some lessons from this about how to communicate, both internally and with fans.
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I have no idea who or what to believe now. I wish I knew more about contracts and what the industry standards are, so that I could judge better.
I want to believe RQ, but I also don't want to ignore accusations of serious misconduct because I'm a fan of something.
And yet, in other contexts I've seen people's work and characters defamed by out-of-context quotes and anonymous insinuations. (I'm thinking particularly of trans people and cis allies smeared by TERFs.) I know it's easy to do.
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ETA: I think my position at this point, until/unless more facts come to light, is going to be that RQ is perhaps not quite as bad at Schottelkotte paints them to be, but nowhere near as good as they claim or as I wanted them to be.
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Pretty unambiguous from what we knew already, IMHO: they ended up in a financial hole, leading to laying off people working on some of the new shows, and starting The Magnus Protocol in an attempt to bring in a lot of money quickly (N.B. I think Jonny in particular wouldn't be working on it if he didn't feel they could do something really good and interesting with it, so this doesn't mean it isn't going to be worthwhile or that they're abandoning artistic integrity, but clearly part of the impetus to do it now is oh shit RQ needs money if it's not going to collapse).
Debatable: how badly they handled layoffs. I stand by my position that if anyone actually yelled at Maddy (or anyone else) they should be fired.
Unknown: did they support the new shows enough? Could they have given them more time to build an audience? Are they potentially going to be continuing work on some of them, or are they just cancelled?
Also, how much was ending up in that hole was down to their failure to plan/miscalculation/other form of cock-up, versus the general UK economic disaster?
Pretty unambiguous: contracts with network shows give them a higher than average cut of the take, in return for various kinds of support and promotion.
Unclear: are network shows actually getting the support and promotion? Is it a good deal for them?
Given the very high number of writers from network shows who've signed up as stretch goal writers for Magnus Protocol, that does suggest that they're not all out there going "fucking hell, never want to work with RQ again".
Post from Harlan of Malevolent:
https://www.tumblr.com/malevolentcast/703493906802868224/you-probably-already-know-about-this-but-an