Gay Media Giant Threatens Former Employee Over Facebook Posts

The publisher of the Advocate and Out magazines–Here Media–has sent a letter threatening legal action to a former employee of its skin magazines for making negative comments about the company on his Facebook page.

Sean Carnage, who edited Unzipped, Man, and Freshmen until they were shut down by Here earlier in the year, posted the letter on his website.  The letter from Here’s top legal executive said that concert promoter Carnage–who’s legal name is Sean Carney–was alleging on Facebook that  the company was involved in a “scam” and threatened Carnage with legal action if he didn’t remove the “false and libelous statements.”

Here, which was formerly Regent Media, has been on the receiving end of a lot of negative publicity since the beginning of the year for not paying its freelancers.  Separate efforts by both Gawker and FishbowlLA complaining about unpaid freelancers has resulted in numerous stories of people going as long as a year in order to be paid for work done on the Advocate, Out, and Alyson Books.

In an interview with Mediaite, Carnage said he posted a link from Queerty on his Facebook page earlier this week that detailed problems at Here subsidiary Alyson Books. In the comments on the post–which was open to the public–Carnage said he detailed his criticisms of his ex-employer and raised concerns about mismanagement at the company.

After other people also commented on the thread, he received the letter from Here’s legal office threatening him with a libel action.  Carnage has now made his Facebook page private, although he has kept up an edited version of his post and comments  on the advice of his attorney.

“It never occurred to me that Here would be monitoring the Facebook page of an ex-employee.  Maybe I should have been more paranoid,” Carnage said.

Representatives from Here Media did not respond to requests for comment.

The gay blog Queerty has also been all over the Here Media story, including the recent publication of correspondence between photo production company Jed Root and Out editor-in-chief Aaron Hicklin over $35,000 in unpaid fees for photo shoots.

The dispute with Carney is especially ugly since it has taken random posts on Carney’s Facebook page and turned it into a larger story about a media company going after a former employee, airing all the dirty laundry in the process. If someone has a Facebook page, blog, and twitter feed, it’s a good bet they aren’t going to keep a letter from the lawyers quiet.

Ex-freelancers and employees have been especially brutal in describing their financial dealing with Here Media, which also owns the Here premium television networks, describing multiple emails and trips to small-claims court in order to collect unpaid fees for freelance pieces that go unpaid for months even though they are often for very small amounts.

Here Media quit selling the Advocate on newsstands and the venerable LGBT news magazine is now only available as a supplement to Out. While the company has entered into a relationship with NBC, the company has also been shuttering publications–including its complete line of gay adult magazines which were rumored to be cash-cows–and there are fears that its book division is next to go.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.