Whitey Ford
12-26-2022, 08:00 PM
Ozy Media Sued over Nearly $1.3 Million Legal Bill from Firm That Helped Avoid ‘Fraud’ Lawsuit and Fielded Federal Probes
https://i.ibb.co/JKbKXPS/MELANINS-DEFICIENCY-scaled.jpg
Ozy Media has been sued over a nearly $1.3 million legal bill its law firm claims to have racked up dealing with the fallout of a bombshell New York Times exposé about the company.
Co-founded by CEO Carlos Watson and chief operating officer Samir Rao in 2013, Ozy Media takes its name from poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias, a sonnet about the fleeting nature of power and the powerful. Taking inspiration from that verse, Ozy started with ambitions of becoming one of the few media companies founded and run by people of color — and it quickly found high-profile backers, reportedly boosted by a seed round of funding from Laurene Powell Jobs. German media giant Axel Springer poured $20 million into the company the next year, and other major investors followed, including billionaire Marc Lasry and the Ford Foundation.
The company’s fortunes turned in October of 2021, when then-Times media columnist Ben Smith reported on a “strange” Zoom call Ozy Media held with another potential investor: Goldman Sachs. According to the article, COO Rao apparently impersonated the voice of YouTube Originals executive Alex Piper on the call. Four people briefed on the meeting anonymously told the Times that the voice appeared to have been “digitally altered.” CEO Watson reportedly blamed Rao’s mental health crisis for the incident.
The article also depicted the upstart digital media company’s reports of high traffic as suspect, either “hype” or worse.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/ozy-media-sued-over-nearly-1-3-million-legal-bill-from-firm-that-helped-avoid-fraud-lawsuit-and-fielded-federal-probes/?utm_source=mostpopular
https://i.ibb.co/JKbKXPS/MELANINS-DEFICIENCY-scaled.jpg
Ozy Media has been sued over a nearly $1.3 million legal bill its law firm claims to have racked up dealing with the fallout of a bombshell New York Times exposé about the company.
Co-founded by CEO Carlos Watson and chief operating officer Samir Rao in 2013, Ozy Media takes its name from poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s Ozymandias, a sonnet about the fleeting nature of power and the powerful. Taking inspiration from that verse, Ozy started with ambitions of becoming one of the few media companies founded and run by people of color — and it quickly found high-profile backers, reportedly boosted by a seed round of funding from Laurene Powell Jobs. German media giant Axel Springer poured $20 million into the company the next year, and other major investors followed, including billionaire Marc Lasry and the Ford Foundation.
The company’s fortunes turned in October of 2021, when then-Times media columnist Ben Smith reported on a “strange” Zoom call Ozy Media held with another potential investor: Goldman Sachs. According to the article, COO Rao apparently impersonated the voice of YouTube Originals executive Alex Piper on the call. Four people briefed on the meeting anonymously told the Times that the voice appeared to have been “digitally altered.” CEO Watson reportedly blamed Rao’s mental health crisis for the incident.
The article also depicted the upstart digital media company’s reports of high traffic as suspect, either “hype” or worse.
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/ozy-media-sued-over-nearly-1-3-million-legal-bill-from-firm-that-helped-avoid-fraud-lawsuit-and-fielded-federal-probes/?utm_source=mostpopular