Shaun King Keeps Raising Money, and Questions About Where It Goes

Daily Beast ^ | 5/26/20 | Kali Holloway

[Impala64ssa]

He blamed issues at The North Star on over-ambition, but seven former employees of the site King launched with great fanfare painted a darker picture.

When Shaun King and progressive journalist Benjamin Dixon launched an ambitious multimedia reboot of Frederick Douglass’ abolitionist newspaper, The North Star, last February, it was celebrated across social media by 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 $10 a month and up for the 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 healthy $10,000 a month. If every single subscriber gave at the lowest $5 a month “student plan” level, subscriber revenue totalled more than $125,000 monthly, or $1.5 million a year, per figures tweeted by both King and The North Star.

“Remember—this is not just the cost of membership—we are going to be building multiple studios and offices and will be hiring nearly 50 world class journalists and staffers for The North Star,” King wrote in a fundraising letter last November. “We are going to be launching a full news website, an iPhone & Android app, four brand new podcasts, online video news broadcasts, and so much more. We are building The North Star together.”

But 14 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 television studio was quietly shuttered last summer, and all Atlanta-based staffers laid off.

[Impala64ssa]

Shaun King aka TalcumX, aka Martin Luther Cream, aka HughLESS Newton is at best incompetent, or a straight up scammer. Hoping that those who did come forward watch their backs. Remember what happened to Betty Van Patter, a former Black Panther supporter and de facto bookeeper who dared to question their financial irregularities only to end up being dredged out of SF Bay. That was her close friend David Horowitz' sad Epiphany.

[BookmanTheJanitor]

Snow J. Simpson ....Thurgood Marshmallow... Mayo Angelou.

[Impala64ssa]

He’s even whiter than Edgar Winter. If he were any whiter he’d be transparent.

[ifinnegan]

He won’t be doing any DNA tests.

[MadMax, the Grinning Reaper]

North Star was also a Marxist magazine published in the early 1990’s. Had a great story on the rise of Bernie Sanders in Vermont and other communists in the political arena.

Shaun is a con-artist, pure and simple. Time to call him on it, Don LeMon, Joy Reid, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Rice.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Talcum X snowed Sigourney Weaver ? Whut ?

[FLvoter]

Martin Luther Cream

[Crucial]

Poor Shaun King, I feel sorry for him.

[Wuli]

“Progressives” and hucksters??? Nah, say it ain’t so.

[A_perfect_lady]

Painted a darker picture, eh? LOL... I see what they did there.

[SunkenCiv]

Reminds me of that old saying, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, I'm just a gullible ***hole."