failing to change the world

[kindkit]

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 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.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

It's somehow more disappointing when they say all the right things and do none of them, than if they were just shitty from the start.

[screechfox]

I'm still digesting the article, to be honest. Because I'm not that surprised by some of it (especially the CMO being shit), but I also think it's flawed, and definitely being presented with a certain angle that might not be the case. I guess since I haven't been a Patron or backed TMP, I have the luxury of not having a monetary stake in whatever shittiness is going on.

I don't like that the author didn't mention being marketing director for another podcast company until they were called on it, at least. Some of the current RQ network shows have commented and said that they're not happy being spoken for and not contacted, but also Ben Meredith retweeted it without comment. Some of the facts don't match up to me, but a lot of it seems plausible, and it's not news to me that they rely on fan or underpaid labour.

I don't like that they went "I heard the Discord was modded by volunteers, but I don't know if this was true, but I'm mentioning it anyway because it supports my point" (paraphrased), when surely it wouldn't be too hard to verify that or even find some of the mods and talk to them? Maybe I'm biased because I'm in those fannish circles in the first place.

It seems written emotively, in a way that means I'm going to need to take another read of it when I have the mental energy, to try and dissect what's underneath. (I'm also trying to ignore my annoyance at their picking TMA character names for their anonymous sources.)

Sorry for the ramble, I'm just still trying to dissect what I think about the whole thing.

[rydra_wong]

Yeah. *sighs* There's a potential bias issue (the writer is marketing director for a rival podcast network, which they did not initially disclose), but if even half of it's true, there's shit RQ really need to account for and clean up.

There's a lot of stuff which I suspect is attributable to RQ's fandom suddenly exploding in size, for example the stuff with the Discord. If you're making podcasts in a blanket tent and have a tiny community of fans, it doesn't seem weird to have a few fans help out with modding. But then the whole thing explodes in size and you end up with a situation where the Discord depends on multiple people doing large amounts of gruelling work for free, and collapses when they (very reasonably) say "hey, we should be getting paid for this".

And you've also had the explosion in size (and presumably income) being followed by a cliff-edge drop after the end of Magnus, with none of their other potential candidate podcasts successfully picking up the slack. With that and the UK economy cratering, does not surprise me if they overextended themselves and landed in a financial hole, thus ending up laying people off.

However, none of this excuses the fact that they've handled shit BADLY.

And then stuff like predatory contracts just seems unconscionable.

[rydra_wong]

https://rustyquill.com/2022/12/13/public-response-to-an-opinion-piece/