Billionaire Joe Ricketts Shuts Down Gothamist, DNAinfo; Deletes The Archives After Writers Unionize

[mahatmakanejeeves]

And there goes DCist.

If you've ever made the mistake of reading anything by Ayn Rand, especially "Atlas Shrugged," you'll recognize the plot.

Trying to link to http://dcist.com gets you this: https://assets.dnainfo.com/message.html

November 2, 2017

Dear DNAinfo and Gothamist Readers:

Today, I've made the difficult decision to discontinue publishing DNAinfo and Gothamist. Reaching this decision wasn't easy, and it wasn't one I made lightly.

I started DNAinfo in 2009 at a time when few people were investing in media companies. But I believed an opportunity existed to build a successful company that would report unbiased neighborhood news and information. These were stories that weren't getting told, and because I believe people care deeply about the things that happen where they live and work, I thought we could build a large and loyal audience that advertisers would want to reach.

A lot of what I believed would happen did, but not all of it. Today, DNAinfo and Gothamist deliver news and information each day to over half a million people's email inboxes; we have over 2 million fans across our social channels; and each month, we have over 15 million visits to our sites by over 9 million people. But more important than large numbers of visits and fans, we've reported tens of thousands of stories that have informed, impacted, and inspired millions of people. And in the process, I believe we've left the world a better place.

But DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure. And while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn't been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded. I want to thank our readers for their support and loyalty through the years. And I want to thank our employees for their tireless effort and dedication.

I'm hopeful that in time, someone will crack the code on a business that can support exceptional neighborhood storytelling for I believe telling those stories remains essential.

Sincerely,

Joe Ricketts
Chief Executive Officer

Billionaire Joe Ricketts Shuts Down Gothamist And DNAinfo, Deletes Their Archives After Writers Unionize

November 2, 2017

The New York Times reports:

A week ago, reporters and editors in the combined newsroom of DNAinfo and Gothamist, two of New York City’s leading digital purveyors of local news, celebrated victory in their vote to join a union. On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down.

At 5 p.m., a post went up on the sites from Mr. Ricketts announcing the decision. He praised them for reporting “tens of thousands of stories that have informed, impacted and inspired millions of people.” But he added, “DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure.”

The New York Daily News reports:

Ricketts said he pulled the plug because the DNA brand — which was melded with Gothamist sites earlier this year — failed to turn a profit.

“Businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure. And while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn’t been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded,” Ricketts wrote.

But Ricketts, an outspoken opponent of unions, had signaled he might bail on the business if WGAE’s vote was successful. Staffers will get full pay and benefits until Feb. 2, the company said in its email.

The shuttered sites include DNAinfo, Gothamist, DCist, Chicagoist, and SFist. At this writing only Ricketts’ letter is posted on each site and archives are unreachable.

[Not Ruth]

1. The best community news source in NYC....gone.....

[DBoon]

2. LAIST is gone too

Best place for local news.

Bastard

[mahatmakanejeeves]

3. Some (all?) of the Twitter accounts are still in place, but there are no new tweets.

https://twitter.com/DCist

https://twitter.com/Gothamist

https://twitter.com/LAist

https://twitter.com/Torontoist

ETA, Monday, 11-06-2017, 11:47 a.m.: Torontoist is a separate operation. It is still running.

https://twitter.com/Chicagoist

https://twitter.com/Shanghaist

https://twitter.com/SFist

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. RIP DCist

RIP DCist

by ARLnow.com November 2, 2017 at 5:35 pm

While we prefer the nomenclature “local news website,” ARLnow launched at a time when “blogging” was still a thing. We were basically a blog.

The granddaddy of all big, D.C. area local news blogs was DCist and late today came the sad news that its billionaire owner has closed all of the DNAinfo and Gothamist websites, including DCist, following a vote to unionize the company’s New York City newsroom.

It was always a thrill to get a link from DCist. Early on it would bring a rush of traffic at a time when we were still trying to build our audience. Even in 2017, getting a DCist link was a sign that an article we published here in Arlington has resonated across the Potomac.

DCist was a consistently interesting and entertaining one-stop-shop for D.C.-centric local news, it had a loyal and often very funny commenting community, it jumpstarted the careers of some excellent journalists, and it was an important component of the slowly shrinking D.C. local news ecosystem.

RIP DCist, you will be missed.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

5. Torontoist is still running.

Torontoist

NOVEMBER 3, 2017 AT 1:00 PMNEWS

Gothamist is dead, but Torontoist lives on

Local journalism is under threat. We need your support.

BY SIMON BREDIN

Last night as I was leaving the office, news broke that Gothamist, a network of local journalism websites of which Torontoist was once a part, was to shut down immediately.

Nearly a decade of archives were wiped instantly from the web, representing the work of journalists from New York City to L.A., San Francisco to Chicago, as far away as Shanghai—all of it gone, at the whim of its billionaire owner, Joe Ricketts, who had recently acquired the sites and was apparently irked {first tweet} that his staff had the nerve to unionize. No advance warning {second tweet} was given. (A spokesperson has since indicated {third tweet} that the archives will be preserved and brought online again in the coming weeks, perhaps because the deletion was a labour lawsuit waiting to happen.) But nevertheless, 115 journalists are out of work, and a number of North America’s largest cities have lost one of their last surviving sources of local news.


A few days ago, Torontoist quietly celebrated its 13th anniversary. (Mazel tov to us.) We began as a part of the Gothamist network, but were spared the same fate as our late sister publications because, back in 2011, we were bought by St. Joseph Media. Since then, the site has gone through several editors, changes in tone and focus, though the core mandate has remained the same: to produce quality local journalism about Toronto.
....

I will leave you all with the cheery thoughts of Tom Scocca, formerly of Gawker, another giant of journalism slain by a vengeful billionaire:

Gawker always said it was in the business of publishing true stories. Here is one last true story: You live in a country where a billionaire can put a publication out of business. A billionaire can pick off an individual writer and leave that person penniless and without legal protection.

If you want to write stories that might anger a billionaire, you need to work for another billionaire yourself, or for a billion-dollar corporation. The law will not protect you. There is no freedom in this world but power and money.

It's illegal to lay people off for trying to unionize. This is a shocking thing for a spokesperson to admit. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/nyregion/dnainfo-gothamist-shutting-down.html …

Link to tweet

Note that as an editor of Chicagoist, I haven’t been told. No email, no letter, no phone call. I found out from the web.

Link to tweet

“DNAinfo will be preserving and archiving all DNAinfo and Gothamist stories,” a spokesperson says http://trib.in/2ztl78g

Link to tweet