Longtime financial journalist Phil Hall was laid off from his job as editor of Weekly Real Estate News after three-and-a-half years.
“It was quite a heave-ho,” said Hall. “Last Tuesday, publisher John G. Stevens did not pay me as per our scheduled arrangement (I was a contractor) and would not acknowledge my multiple attempts over a few hours to reach him by phone, text messaging, and email to discuss the absence of payment. I was paid the following day from the personal PayPal account of another individual who worked on the back end of the website. On Friday afternoon, my access to our website was abruptly cut while I was posting news. Again, it took hours of multiple messaging before Mr. Stevens answered me, saying he was having ‘personal problems’ and there was no money to keep me employed because advertising revenue dried up.”
Hall, who previously covered the real estate sector as an editor with the now-defunct companies Zackin Publications and NMP Media Corp., later recovered an email that showed his password was changed without his knowledge.
Stevens is now posting articles on the Weekly Real Estate News site with his byline. Last week, Stevens also announced he was named chief growth officer at Colorado-based Mortgage Solutions Financial.
