How The Pool got out of its depth, according to a former columnist

Its launch heralded a new age for feminist media but last week The Pool went bust — and still owes its writers thousands 
A bigger splash: The Pool’s founders, Sam Baker, left, and Lauren Laverne, who both resigned from the board in August
Holly McGlynn
Laura Craik6 February 2019

When I was 12, I lost a fiver. In truth, I didn’t know whether it was lost or stolen but the distinction felt important. “Lost” put the blame squarely at the feet of my own carelessness. “Stolen” exonerated me from any blame. I decided it had been stolen. But then the anger came. How dare someone steal a fiver from me? What right did they have? It was my fiver.

Last month, I lost £7,250. Or was it stolen? That depends on how you look at it. Had I been careless? Again, that depends on how you look at it. I’m one of an unknown number of freelance journalists currently owed thousands of pounds by The Pool, an online platform launched in March 2015 aimed at “women who are too busy to browse”, which went into administration last Friday, making 24 staff redundant. Founded by Sam Baker, a former editor of Red and Cosmopolitan, and Lauren Laverne, the presenter and current host of Desert Island Discs, the site was heralded as a new and innovative way to communicate with women. The content was female-focused, and appeared throughout the day in a series of “drops”. From the start, a slew of well-known writers were on board, from Thomasina Miers, the co-founder of Mexican street food chain Wahaca, to Sali Hughes from the Guardian and comedian Viv Groskop.

I’d been approached in early 2015 by Baker to write a weekly column, and was happy to be part of an exciting new launch. Well-loved by readers and contributors alike for its sensitive handling of thorny subjects such as miscarriage, rape, child sex trafficking and gender inequality, The Pool swiftly gathered a loyal readership. It paid a decent word rate, championed new female writers and was perfectly placed to capture the post-#MeToo spirit of the times. Which it did, in 2017 winning a Webby (billed as “the Oscars of the internet”) for its innovative content, as well as a million unique users. Everything seemed to be going well.

You don’t think to check the records at Companies House in case an outwardly successful, much-loved, well-read website is in fact £760,000 in debt, has an outstanding personal loan of £40,000, borrowed £250,000 against the company’s assets and lost £1.8 million in the previous financial year. As a freelancer, you can’t possibly be aware of office politics, or worrying signs such as the fact that the entire board bar one resigned in August 2018. None of the staff tell you. Why would they? Maybe they don’t know.

Besides, they need your copy. They keep commissioning you, right through the Christmas period and into early January, only stopping — or so it seems — once they are outed first on Facebook and then on Twitter by a mounting number of freelancers who haven’t been paid.

Like them, I’d been chasing payment for months but The Pool’s explanation that they’d been changing accountants, along with profuse apologies, had been enough to placate me.

I believed in The Pool, and trusted the women who worked there. In four years, everyone I’d dealt with had always been honest and professional.

The reasons behind The Pool’s demise are hard to fathom. Laverne and Baker resigned from the board in August, along with three fellow board members, with Baker ceding her editorship to Cate Sevilla in September. Sevilla, who used to work at Google Arts and BuzzFeed, denies knowing about the looming financial difficulties: sources who worked with her say she was as shocked as anyone. Baker remained as chief content officer. She resigned two weeks before The Pool went into administration.

Which left Dominic Hill as the sole owner, controlling a media company which, it transpires, he had little experience of running. The Pool’s board had unanimously agreed that ceding control to Hill, who also owns a company that sells period products via a subscription service, was the best chance of saving the team’s jobs. “He convinced us of his commitment to appointing new management, growing the business internationally and taking it to new heights,” says Baker. “Very sadly, that did not come to pass.”

There is no place for “feelings” in business. But when a business fails to behave in a responsible manner, what do you do with the feelings this spawns? None of us live or work in a vacuum, much as London’s growing army of freelancers, sat at home alone in their sweatpants, might feel like they do. Every action has a consequence.

Here are the consequences, for me, of The Pool’s closure. Overnight, I’ve lost a sizeable chunk of my regular income, as well as being owed for five months’ work. It wakes you up at night. It makes you anxious: a cold claw of fear that grips your stomach as you lie there wondering whether this is the thing that will finally break you.

What rankles most is that staff, freelancers and other suppliers could have exerted damage limitation earlier if those in the know hadn’t kept pretending all was fine. Sources close to The Pool claim that at 5pm last Friday, Hill told staff that he had found a buyer, and was in the final negotiations of a rescue package. Two hours later, shocked staff were sent an email saying the company was going into administration. “Like you, I loved The Pool and what it stood for and I’m sorry that I let you and it down,” Hill wrote in another email. “Thank you so much for working and loving The Pool right to the last minute. It says a lot about a company/brand/business that even when the team know the business is out of the [sic] time, they continue giving it their all!!”

Whatever your feelings about people who use double exclamation marks, few would disagree that they feel frivolous when used to tell people they have lost their jobs. In an earlier text message to The Guardian, Hill had signed off with a winky face emoji. It was at this point that I realised I and countless others would never see our money.

Sevilla recently tweeted “I’d rather focus on accountability than sentiment”. So would we all, but in the absence of any accountability — Hill is uncontactable, and details of the administrators he promised to reveal on Friday have yet to be shared — understandably, there’s a lot of bad sentiment around. “I feel betrayed that such a proudly female-first company didn’t, ultimately, look out for the women it purported to champion,” is how one contributor puts it. “Who do they think pays my bills?” But there is also much kind sentiment, not least from the 1,152 people who have so far contributed to a GoFundMe page set up by literary agent Julia Kingsford, who has no affiliation to The Pool but enjoyed reading its content and wanted to help those employees in debt. So far, £23,200 has been raised.

I hate talking about money: it makes me feel as vulnerable and exposed as if I’d run down the street naked. But it feels important, and here’s why. London doesn’t run on inspo quotes, feminist memes and wink emojis: it runs on money, the one topic Londoners are often most loathe to discuss. Days before its demise, The Pool posted another inspirational quote on its Instagram feed: “Pour yourself a drink, put on some lipstick and pull yourself together.” Alas, not every crisis can be solved by wine and lippie, any more than it can be solved by that other female-friendly trope, 10 minutes of meditation in a darkened room. Regardless of gender or the job they do, if you want to look after a person’s mental health, pay them what you owe them, and never expect them to work for free.

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