Brooklyn Magazine Owner Owes Freelancers Thousands: Report

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK — Former freelancers accused Brooklyn Magazine and Northside Festival founders of stiffing them for thousands of dollars worth of work, according to reports.

Daniel and Scott Stedman — founders of the Northside Media conglomerate that runs Taste Talks, Brooklyn Briefly and the Williamsburg outdoor festival SummerScreen — has yet to pay tens of thousands of dollars in wages to former staffers and freelance journalists, some of whom have waited years to paid for their work, according to a Gothamist report.

“@danielstedman and @nscottstedman are self-serving parasites, masquerading as harmless idiots, that actively exploit the artists they make a show of championing,” tweeted Laura Lannes, a freelance illustrator who says she’s owed $1,300. “It's high past time someone kicked their house of cards down.

Lannes, a contributor to Taste Talks, the Northside Media’s culinary publication, said the Stedmans ignored her invoices until she started a social media campaign to demand payment earlier this month, on the two-year anniversary of her illustrations being published.

Fellow freelancers hopped on the Twitter bandwagon and began publicly sharing their own stories of lost wages.

I was too afraid to say a year ago but yeah, they owe me $200. Such a bummer to have chased it for so long. I filed a complaint earlier this year. https://t.co/0QpzixnqeX
— jenn de la Vega (@Randwiches) July 12, 2018

I was the food editor at Northside for 6 years (until this past fall), and have served the company with a suit for $8K still owed in back wages, after numerous calls and emails to Danny and AP were either ignored or met with excuses and false promises. MORE than happy to speak.
— Sarah Zorn (@SarahZornBK) July 9, 2018

Same thing happened to me this year for over $5,000. They paid me, and then the check bounced a month later. Whats up @TasteTalks who's running the show over there? What kind of company you got going on @nscottstedman? @NorthsideFest https://t.co/D8WQgvcVB9
— Josh Elkin (@TheJoshElkin) July 6, 2018

Several freelancers noted that Daniel Stedman had a litany of reasons — including Zealot Network’s buying and selling back Northside Media in 2016, his own busy schedule and family vacations — for missing their payment deadlines, Gothamist reported.

Yet the company seems to be flourishing in spite of Stedman professing he might “die of exhaustion" and Brooklyn Magazine cutting most of its staff last year. The magazine continues to publish daily content on its website, the Northside Festival celebrated its tenth anniversary in June and SummerScreen will show eight free movies in Williamsburg this summer.

"Things are more complicated than they seem," Stedman told Gothamist. "I'm starting to lose faith in the degree of honesty that I have treated everybody with. It is clearly doing me a disservice."

Stedman also told Lannes last week that he would provide her with an update as soon as returned home from a vacation with his kids, according to an email Lannes shared on Twitter.

Lannes has filed a complaint with the New York City Consumer Affairs Department, claiming Northside Media violated the Freelance Isn't Free Act, but has yet to hear back, she told Gothamist.

And several others took Stedman to small claims court, with less than satisfying results, they said.

Former food editor Sarah Zorn has yet to hear back about the lawsuit she filed last month, Alex Jones, a freelance sound engineer, won the $878.29 he was owed in small claims court but had to pay his own court fees, and videographer Doug Anderson said his team finally settled for a $3,500 payment, half of what Stedman had promised.

“Freelance sucks and I often have to remind people to pay me, but this is ridiculous,” Lannes told Gothamist. “It doesn't seem like they have any intention to give me that money.”

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