INC Cover dan priceThe journalist who wrote an Inc. Magazine cover story about Dan Price — the Gravity Payments CEO known for raising minimum salaries to $70,000 — made a pitch to collaborate with Price on his book before continuing to cover his story as a reporter, newly disclosed emails show.

“Over the last few months, I’ve done a lousy job of hiding the fact that I would love to work with you,” said the journalist, Inc. contributing editor Paul Keegan, in an email to Price on Oct. 1, after his cover story was filed but before the magazine was distributed.

Keegan told Price that it “didn’t seem right to get into any serious discussions about your book until the Inc. story was finished.” However, in the months that followed, Keegan continued to cover and comment on the Gravity Payments story, including a lawsuit filed against Price by his brother and business partner, Lucas Price.

That suit culminated earlier this month in a decisive legal victory for the Gravity Payments chief executive, prompting this reaction from Keegan.

Earlier, following a critical Bloomberg Businessweek story about Dan Price, Keegan came to his defense.

After receiving the Oct. 1 email proposing a collaboration on his book, Dan Price responded at the time by saying, “Hi Paul, great stuff! Let us get back to you!” A Gravity Payments spokesman said today that Keegan has not worked on the book. (See full statement from Gravity below.)

Keegan responded to GeekWire’s inquiry this afternoon with an extensive statement (published in full below), in which he reiterated that he waited until the cover story was finished to talk to Price about the book.

“When researching a long magazine article, I tend to get very close to my subjects,” Keegan said in the statement, in part. “They get to know me very well and I get to know them. It would have been ridiculous for me to pretend that I was not passionate about this subject. I told Dan when I agreed with him, and challenged him when I disagreed with him.”

Here is Keegan’s full email to Dan Price on the topic from Oct. 1.

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That email was among a series of previously confidential messages between Keegan, Price, and Gravity Payments and Inc. representatives, made public late last week as part of the court record. The emails were originally filed under seal, but the judge in the case later issued a ruling to make them public.

The emails also include a previously private exchange from Jan. 26, in which Keegan sought information from Gravity after GeekWire reported that Price had not, at that point, mortgaged his homes. Inc. had reported that Price had “sold all his stocks, emptied his retirement accounts, and mortgaged his two properties — including a $1.2 million home with a view of Puget Sound — and poured the $3 million he raised into Gravity.”

Price, who in court conceded that he made some “overstatements” to the media, acknowledged in a court filing that the homes hadn’t been mortgaged at that point, saying at the time that the lawsuit had blocked his initial attempts to secure the mortgages. The magazine reported in a follow-up story that an internal communication issue at Gravity also contributed to the mortgages being delayed. Price has since taken out a mortgage on one of his homes, property records show.

Here is an excerpt from Keegan’s email to Gravity on that topic.

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The messages reveal a relationship between Gravity and Inc. that ranged from comfortable to contentious. At one point, a Gravity staffer offered to give Inc. access to information in exchange for conference appearances and placement of a first-person piece by Price in the magazine.

“You have strung Paul along, and strung him along, and strung him along some more, and now you want us to turn over to you our most valuable real estate in return for not destroying his story at the last minute. What are you, the Godfather?” wrote Eric Schurenberg, Inc. Media president and editor-in-chief, in a Jan. 27 email to Price and a Gravity staffer, responding to that proposal.

He added, “The sad irony is that Paul Keegan is the best friend Gravity Payments has in media right now.”

Gravity Payments issued this statement this afternoon:

“Inc Magazine had put Dan on the cover with a headline asking “Is Dan the Best Boss in America?’ The story detailed the challenges and early successes of the $70k minimum wage program. Shortly after, several tabloid-style stories soon appeared from a few outlets. Inc became understandably concerned by these innuendo-filled stories, and wanted to do an exhaustively comprehensive fact check. They had invested a lot of time, and we didn’t want to leave them hanging. Because of the tabloid stories that were coming out, we agreed to and executed this exhaustive fact check. However, Inc wanted it to be on-the-record. We mutually considered the option of allowing the fact check be on record, in exchange for the opportunity for Dan to tell his story in a future issue to set the record straight. Ultimately, we mutually decided not to pursue this idea.”

Here is Paul Keegan’s full statement, issued today, about the collaboration proposal he sent to Price.

Dear media,

I’m a freelance writer who feels deeply that business people need to take more responsibility to combat social problems. From income inequality to climate change, the time for screwing around is over – CEOs and shareholders need to wake up and do the right thing.

That’s why, after meeting Kip Tindell of The Container Store while reporting a story for Fortune magazine in 2009, I suggested to Kip that we write a book together. The result was UNCONTAINABLE: How Passion, Commitment, and Conscious Capitalism Built a Business Where Everyone Thrives (Hachette, 2014).

I’ve been a freelance magazine writer for thirty years, having written for Fortune, Inc, The New York Times magazine, GQ, Esquire, and many others. I am not a daily beat reporter who has to hew to a newspaper’s “he said/she said” strictures of “objectivity.” Editors hire me because my long magazine stories are not only scrupulously researched, but have a strong point of view.

In May of 2015, I was assigned a story by Inc to write about wage stagnation and how the entrepreneurs who read the magazine might think about how much to pay their employees. I had not planned to feature Price, since he had been written about so much already. But I wanted to hear his ideas on the subject, so I called his office and on July 9, we met at a café in Manhattan near my office (he was in New York on business).

During our meeting, I was very impressed by Dan, who seemed like someone truly trying to reform the business world. He said he had been contacted by publishers and agents who wanted him to write a book. I told him that I’d just published a book, UNCONTAINABLE, with very similar themes, and if I don’t end up writing about him for Inc., I’d be happy to work with him on the book if he needed a ghostwriter. If I did write about him, I said, any discussions of working together on the book would have to wait until after my story was finished.

I went back to my editors and pitched a story that focused on Dan because I felt – and my editors agreed – that his story perfectly encapsulated the challenges entrepreneurs face when trying to pay their employees well while still turning a profit. Plus, the tremendous amount of attention he was getting revealed how hot the topic was – not only as a business story, but in the culture at large.

When researching a long magazine article, I tend to get very close to my subjects. They get to know me very well and I get to know them. It would have been ridiculous for me to pretend that I was not passionate about this subject. I told Dan when I agreed with him, and challenged him when I disagreed with him.

We did not discuss the possibility of working together on his book again until October 1, after my article for Inc was finished and had been sent to the printer (the story was published in the November issue and hit the newsstands in late October, but – because print magazines require a long lead time – it closed in late September).

When a freelancer finishes one job, his thoughts usually turn to prospects for the next job. On October 1, I emailed Dan offering to help with his book project in any way I could, including being his ghostwriter. We had no further contact about the matter until November 2, when I emailed him again, saying I read on Inc.com that he had signed a book deal and had decided to write the book himself. I congratulated him and asked him to let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, including offering cures for writer’s block.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, there is a pianist and a bassist in a music studio waiting for me to bring my trumpet and play some jazz standards.

Sincerely,

Paul Keegan

Following the court ruling in favor of Dan Price, his brother Lucas Price told GeekWire that he was considering his options, including the possibility of an appeal.

Here are the email exchanges filed with the court. (GeekWire has redacted email addresses and phone numbers.)

Inc. Magazine Dan Price

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