dan price made deals with inc. magazine to bury unfavorable press

EXCHANGES SHOW SHOCKING ETHICAL BREACHES

LOS ANGELES - Famed Gravity Payments CEO Dan Price soared into the celebrity stratosphere, thanks in large part to ceaselessly favorable media coverage. One publication, however, apparently had a quid pro quo arrangement that extended far beyond ethical norms.

In January of 2016, Hundred Eighty Degrees (HED) released findings from a year-long investigation which illustrated how Price engineered a 10-year fraud scheme anchored to a steady stream of untruths about his origin story.

At the close of 2015, Price faced a brief torrent of scrutiny.

HED discovered that Price and his legal team threatened the University of Kentucky with a defamation suit after ex-wife Kristie Colón used a campus TedX event to allege a raft of domestic violence. The university buckled. They removed all references to Colón.

Bloomberg alleged that Price lied about the impetus for his wage hike. According to the report, Price’s brother and Gravity co-founder Lucas had already sued Price for bilking large sums of money from the company for personal use. Price purportedly staged the now famous wage hike to eclipse any fallout.

HED and other outlets also accused Price of lying about his claims to reduce his million-dollar-plus salary for more than a brief spell and for leveraging his own assets to cover the wage hike.

At the same time, HED contacted Penguin Random House - who apparently offered Price a $500,000 book deal - for comment about Price’s alleged fraud and other abuse. PRH never responded. They did withdraw the purported deal. Gravity Payments published the book.

An anonymous source thereafter provided HED with a series of then undisclosed emails between Price’s team and both the President and editor in chief of Inc., and one of its contributing writers.

One other email shows how Price contacted Patti Cohen, the New York Times journalist who broke the wage hike story, about securing favorable coverage.

Inc. Magazine was founded in 1979. Today, the multi-media platform is widely known for its Inc. 500 / 5000 lists as well as articles focusing on America's emerging companies and their best practices.

Inc. has entertained a particularly curious engagement with Price over previous years. Its cover story on Price titled "Is This the Best Boss in America" is but one example in a long list of pro-Price coverage

Inc. writer, Paul Keegan, was especially effusive in both his praise and defense of Price, despite any and all reports that illustrate Price's questionable character or operational tactics.

Keegan and Inc. ignored or denied all HED allegations and those of other media outlets. After reading the HED investigation, Inc. chief, Eric Schurenberg, sent an email stating,

"Thanks. Amazing. I’ve now seen the Geekwire piece, too, and Gravity’s seemingly preemptive response. Hard hitting, exhaustive piece. How did you afford to spend four months investigating this guy?"

Keegan penned nine pieces on Price in less than a year. Inc. covered him in print or video 21 times and counting during that same period.

The publication also gifted Price with four video segments in Inc.'s high-profile series titled "The Playbook" and a keynote speaker spot at their renowned annual conference.

Keegan has described Price as such...

"Dan Price caused a media firestorm by establishing a $70,000 minimum wage at his Seattle company, Gravity Payments... before Hollywood agents, reality-show producers, and book publishers began throwing elbows for a piece of the hip, 31-year-old entrepreneur with the shoulder-length hair and Brad Pitt looks."

"It doesn't hurt that the 31-year-old man delivering these lines, with his beard, shoulder-length hair and matinee-idol looks, suggests a hip, modern version of another revolutionary who threw money-changers out of the temple a couple thousand years ago."

"Thus began Price's transformation from classic entrepreneur to crusader against income inequality, set on fundamentally changing the way America does business."

"Price had not only struck a nerve; he had also turbocharged a debate now raging across the American landscape, from presidential forums to barrooms to fast-food restaurants."

"Until Price dropped his wage bomb, much of that debate was punditry. He gave it a name and a face: a modern Robin Hood helping the working class by stealing from himself --"

"In fact, the biggest threat to Price's company isn't his strategy; it's his brother [Lucas]."

"...the Businessweek story concluded, "The lawsuit couldn't have been prompted by the pay raise--if anything, it may have been the other way around. After all, Price announced his magnanimous act a month after his brother sued him for, in essence, being greedy. Lowering his pay could give Price negotiating leverage, too." That scenario is a possibility that Inc. considered and rejected as far-fetched. Nothing in the Businessweek story alters our judgment."

"Inc. will not address allegations in the Businessweek article from Price's ex-wife, Kristie Colón... She did not challenge the story's characterization of her marriage to Dan as ending "amicably." In fact, blog posts written by Colón before and at the time of the divorce lend considerable credence to this characterization."

These are just a few of many examples whereby Keegan either anointed Price in some manner or rushed to his aid to somehow stem an unfavorable tide. Keegan went so far as to proactively promote Price's then coming appearance on a PBS broadcast about salary transparency (show aired in May).

Google "Dan Price," and Keegan's laudatory piece titled "Here's What Really Happened at That Company That Set a $70,000 Minimum Wage" ranks #1 and has for over a year.

Inc. charges anywhere from $20,000 to $180,000 for print advertising space and a handsome fee for digital space. The magazine circulation is over 700k while annual web traffic is nearly 24 million. Price’s cost was zero.

Most startling, however, is that this ongoing media romance between Inc. and Price is by design, as attested to by the below emails. Not only does Inc. agree to offer wholly biased treatment so that he can weather any and all naysayers, but Keegan actually goes so far as to ask Price to employ him.

Keegan calls himself "a journalist with three decades of experience," yet this quid pro quo arrangement with Price is anything but journalism.

Price's right hand men, Emery Wager and former director Ryan Pirkle, tell Keegan that they "trust him to write a fair piece, but someone will ignore half of the facts and write a derivative piece that is unfair." This back and forth over months enlists Keegan and Inc. as devoted foot soldiers to carry out Price's marching orders in exchange for a slightly open back door to the inner workings at Gravity.

Having engaged Gravity Payments for well over a year, including intimate discussions with top gatekeepers, HED is well aware of the PR machine that Price has carefully crafted and continues to leverage. Gravity's manipulation of traditional media relations practices is just as effective as it is seemingly unscrupulous.

More than a dozen former employees corroborated the idea that Price has built a take-no-prisoners public relations effort to sustain his public mantle and obscure his private infamy.

An apt example is the audacious attempted damage control seen below in which Price contacts Cohen of The New York Times to sway her from doing a hatchet job on him or Gravity. Also, Wager literally bribes Keegan to "help even out the risks for us [Gravity]" by offering pull quotes for Keegan's article in exchange for a sizable future article in the print edition of the magazine, favorable copy in future articles and, to top it all off, a guaranteed paid speaking arrangement at future Inc. events.

Big media publishers traditionally separate advertising services from content services. Advertising fees sustain their valuable print or digital real estate operations. Perhaps more importantly, such ad dollars are not supposed to influence coverage or otherwise create a favorable content bias toward those who advertise.

Lines have been blurred since the advent of cable news operations like FOX or MSNBC and the growing trend toward "branded content." However, such platforms and tactics are overt means that consumers and advertisers have come to embrace, for better or worse.

That said, the agenda struck between Price and Inc. is extraordinarily dubious due to its secretive and prejudicial nature and the offense afforded to paid advertisers who do not receive such untoward benefits. This gross distortion of duty dismantles public trust of news and information organizations and justly vilifies the businesses with whom they engage in such nefarious practices, such as Gravity Payments.

Emails between Inc. and Price refer to an "internal investigation" at Gravity Payments, potentially referring to the HED fraud investigation. Inc. agreed to keep the matter out of public purview in exchange for first-look documents and other information that Price and company deemed acceptable for disclosure. Keegan, Schurenberg, Cohen and others refused further comment.