What OpenFile owes

The number above is the total, up-to-date amount of money that OpenFile’s contributors (the ones I’ve spoken to so far) say they’re owed for work they did before the online publication went “on pause” in September, 2012; why I’m tracking that number is what’s below.

Good journalism costs money. Or, at least, good journalists deserve good money. That was one thing that OpenFile always got right, right from the beginning: here was an online publication, in cities across Canada, paying better-than-competitive rates—decent were they print rates, incredible given that they were online—to freelancers, all to write the kind of local news stories that other publications weren’t, or couldn’t. Being able to pay people decently for online journalism was one of the big reasons I took a job with OpenFile as their Toronto Editor at the beginning of 2011, and one of the big reasons why, after I left a few months later (it wasn’t right for me, and there were things in my life I needed to focus on that weren’t work), I remained a fan. I only have nice things to say about how I was treated, financially and otherwise.

Others, though, might not share my feelings.

OpenFile’s been “on pause” since September 28, 2012, when its founder, and my old boss, Wilf Dinnick announced that it was undergoing “a pretty big change over the next few weeks,” and was no longer publishing until “the next phase.”

It took a while before everyone realized that the money OpenFile owed but had yet to pay out to contributors was on pause, too. In an interview in early November with J-Source, Dinnick admitted that “things were a bit of a mess in the bookkeeping”; OpenFile’s bank accounts had been frozen, he said, and the company’s books were in the hands of Canada Revenue Agency auditors. But Dinnick sounded confident. “We hope to have that money released very soon, probably in the next few weeks, but again it is up to an auditor when that is done and when the accounts are loosened and I can write those checks.” Until then, nothing.

I got curious. I started emailing around, and put a call out for contributors to tell me if they were owed money, and, if so, how much. I promised them that if I published anything using their totals, which I wasn’t sure I was going to do, I’d keep their names out of it unless they asked otherwise, and I wouldn’t mention how much any one person was owed, two things I knew that, in their position, I’d probably want.

A few days after the J-Source article was published, on November 12, a small group of freelancers outed themselves and put their names to an open letter, demanding they be paid back. “When the organization closed,” it reads, “many of OpenFile’s freelancers were still waiting to be paid. Some of us had been waiting for months. In late October, several of us emailed company founder Wilf Dinnick, asking when we would be paid. We received no response.”

Later that November day, Dinnick sent an email to some freelancers, promising that “answers / resolution” would come when he’d always said they would, within thirty to sixty days of the announcement in September of OpenFile’s hiatus. (This seemed to be news to the freelancers I’d started talking to.) “So as we are approaching the end of November,” he explained, “we should have clarity on timing. At that point, I will be in touch to confirm the exact release date of your money and your personal invoice information to ensure no confusion.”

“To be clear,” he continued, “you will get paid for your work.”

I still wasn’t sure whether I wanted to write anything about this—and then, whether to write about it here, or for The Grid—and I spoke to Dinnick the next day on the phone and told him as much. He asked that much of the conversation be off the record, but I was left with the same impression that those owed money were: it was on its way, and sooner rather than later. I wanted OpenFile to come back, I wanted everyone to get paid, and, most of all, I wanted Dinnick to be right. He’d told J-Source that “running a start-up is like being punched in the face every day,” and from working with him and seeing how much hard work he put into OpenFile, I believed it. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and decided to wait.

That was three months ago. And here’s where it gets messy.

As December and January came and went, more and more contributors emailed me to get me to add what they were owed to my tally. For several, it was more than $1000. And they also shared messages they’d received from Dinnick that often seemed to contradict each other.

In early December, for instance, some freelancers got an email from Dinnick saying, without promising any exact date, that the audit would likely be finished within two weeks. Towards the end of December, Dinnick told another freelancer that they would receive a cheque within weeks. In early January, others were being told that the audit was now done, but that cheques would be sent out by the end of that month. On January 10, Wilf tweeted to two journalists that payments were “all being wrapped up now.” On January 17, he told Bethany Horne, a former OpenFile Toronto intern and freelancer (before my time) and an OpenFile Halifax curator (after that) in an email that “checks and letters are now being processed and being sent out over the next several weeks.” (Horne was the only person willing to let me quote directly from Dinnick’s emails to her and use her name.) In another email that day, he wrote back with a new deadline: “anywhere from 7 days to 4 weeks. I am obviously hoping for sooner, and since we have been in touch ongoing with the govt, I am sure it will be sooner. So I would guess end of the month or LATEST start of next.”

In another email sent to Horne later that day, Dinnick told her something he told others as well: “I am sending checks NOW so when the cash is released, I will ping you and you can cash, so there is no waiting time.”

By the end of the month, Horne says she still didn’t have a cheque, or her money. She emailed Dinnick again on January 30. “Your check will be delivered when the auditors clears everything and we can send them out, which I am sure has already happened or will happen shortly,” he wrote back.

In early February, Dinnick told another freelancer that cheques were being processed, and that he wasn’t sure how long it would take. Maybe days more, maybe weeks.

All the while, one freelancer tells me that Dinnick “never responded to my e-mails asking about payment,” and several others who say they’re owed money say they’ve been without any sort of update for months, or that they’ve emailed Dinnick but haven’t heard back. Some have given up. Others are weighing their legal options.

But, four and a half months later, none of those I’ve spoken to have been paid yet. None have received cheques. None have received information on the “exact release date of your money,” as Dinnick promised they would have by the end of November.

Enough’s enough. I’ve decided to stop waiting and publish the total amount of money they all say they’re owed, which as I write this in mid-February is $12,530. I’ll keep that number updated above if it shrinks (which I hope it does, soon) or grows (which it will if there are more people out there owed money by OpenFile who haven’t emailed me yet). Maybe everyone who’s owed money is actually just a few days away from getting it after all, but the number may well get bigger before it gets smaller: Kathy Vey, OpenFile’s editor-in-chief while I was there, told me recently that when she left the publication in February 2012, each of the six cities was paying between $4,500 and $6,500 a month just to freelancers.

Last Tuesday, February 5, I emailed Dinnick again. I told him I was writing this, and he agreed to answer, on the record, a list of questions that I sent him. But a week later he still hasn’t, even after three more emails on three different days over the last week from me asking for his replies, including one this morning in which I said I’d be publishing the total today. I’ve finally run out of good excuses to not write this, try as I might to find them. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; after J-Source’s article was published in November, in the email he sent to freelancers, Dinnick wrote that he was “not going to be speaking with the media anymore on this issue, only because it has created confusion.” They’re not the only ones who’re confused.

The good news: for the first time, the tally above is going down, rather than up—as of April 9, it was $21,343.50, but as I write this, it’s now at $13,687.00, and it’s likely to keep going down over the next few days. That’s because, nearly seven months after OpenFile went “on pause,” and two months after I published this post, some contributors say they’re finally being paid. (Several got cheques earlier this month, postdated for mid-April, that they’re cashing now.)

The bad news: several of those owed money say they haven’t received a thing yet, several of those who have received cheques say they’re not for the full amount, and I keep hearing from more new people, asking me to add their numbers to the total. Dinnick still hasn’t answered the questions I sent back in February, though he told J-Source right after I published the initial total that everyone owed money would be repaid in “a matter of weeks,“ and that they were in the “final stretch.” But it’s not quite over yet.

Half a year ago, OpenFile seemed well on its way to repaying everything it owed (or at least everything I knew about). It’s stalled since then, though: as I write this, the total amount has been sitting at $4,640.60 for two months, and many of those who say they’re still owed money say that Wilf Dinnick stopped responding to their emails months ago—it’s a smaller group now, few of whom are owed much. So I emailed Dinnick today, and told him I wanted to talk on the record about how much longer it would take to repay everyone, and what’s taken so long. It’s the first time in nearly a year I’ve put those questions to him; he never answered them the last time. He told me to call him, and when I did, he told me off.

"Just to be clear, I don’t owe you an explanation,” he said. There are only “two people that are owed money,” he told me, and, for that matter, “one I actually have a problem with.” A few minutes later, he told me that, actually, only one person hasn’t been paid, and “there’s two other people—contractors—and those are private issues. It’s got nothing to do with you.”

I told Dinnick that wasn’t what I was hearing—that there were more people than that still waiting on a cheque.

“That’s fine, David. I don’t care what you’re hearing. I don’t care what you’re hearing, David, I really don’t. This has nothing—you have nothing—to do with me,” he said. “We don’t have a relationship, I’m not your friend. Like, I don’t get it. All you’re doing is you’re pestering me, you’re being annoying, you’re not—it’s not constructive, there’s nothing constructive here, so I think it’s best…”

I interrupted Dinnick to remind him this call was on the record.

“Okay David. I know that you’ve got some sort of vendetta, or you’re angry at me or something, I don’t know…”

That wasn’t true, I told him. (Dinnick had also told me early in the call that “I say one thing to you and then you tweet out nasty things so I’m not really interested in engaging,” which also isn’t true, and he couldn’t point to any “nasty things” I’ve said when I asked.)

“I just think it’s best you don’t call me or email me anymore because you’re really unconstructive, okay?” he said. “So I really wish you good luck.”

I told Dinnick the truth, that I thought it was great that OpenFile had repaid more than twenty thousand dollars it owed to freelancers. “Oh thank you for that, David,” he said back, “but you know, according to you I wasn’t going to pay that back, right?” I told him I’d never said or suggested that, either. “Yeah, well, I—you know. This is really not helpful, David. I don’t know what you want from me.”

What would be helpful, then, I pressed, if people wanted to get the money they’re still owed back?

“Okay, look. Listen, David, I’m really not interested in engaging with you, okay? I’ve really been, I’ve felt, overgenerous with you. I don’t owe you an explanation, and I’ve had a great working relationship with everyone. And you’re the only one…”

I started to say that there were plenty of people I’ve talked to who’d say otherwise. And I still wanted to know what I called him to ask about: how much longer would it take to repay everyone, and what’s taken so long? But then, to someone in the background, I heard him say, “I’m coming, hold on, I’m coming.” Then back to me: “I gotta go, David, okay? Take care. Good luck.” And then he hung up.