Slashdot Mirror
New Victims in the 'Billionaire War on Journalism' (newsweek.com)
Newsweek offers a new reminder that internet journalism can vanish in a corporate shutdown or be "sued out of existence" -- so it certainly isn't permanent.
Writers at the local New York City news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist -- as well as Gothamist's network of city-specific sister sites, such as LAist and DCist -- learned this chilling lesson on Thursday, when billionaire Joe Ricketts abruptly shut down the publications and fired their employees. The decision has been widely regarded as a form of retaliation in response to the newsroom's vote last week to unionize with the Writers Guild of America, East. Worse, for a full 20 hours after the news broke, Gothamist.com and DNAinfo.com effectively didn't exist: Any link to the sites showed only Ricketts's statement about his decision, which claims the business was not profitable enough to support the journalism...
The larger tragedy is a nationwide death of local news. Alt-weeklies are flailing as ad revenue dries up. The Village Voice, a legendary New York paper, published its final print issue in September. Houston Press just laid off its staff and ended its print edition this week. Countless stories won't be covered, because the journalistic institutions to tell them no longer exist. Who benefits from DNAinfo being shuttered? Billionaires. Shady landlords. Anyone DNAinfo reported critically on over the years. Who loses? Anyone who lives in the neighborhoods DNAinfo and Gothamist helped cover.
The larger tragedy is a nationwide death of local news. Alt-weeklies are flailing as ad revenue dries up. The Village Voice, a legendary New York paper, published its final print issue in September. Houston Press just laid off its staff and ended its print edition this week. Countless stories won't be covered, because the journalistic institutions to tell them no longer exist. Who benefits from DNAinfo being shuttered? Billionaires. Shady landlords. Anyone DNAinfo reported critically on over the years. Who loses? Anyone who lives in the neighborhoods DNAinfo and Gothamist helped cover.
You want moneylosing local journalism, fund it yourself. Don't expect others to fund it for you.
Trying to tie this back to Gawker getting BTFO won't make people more sympathetic to that event, it will only make people more apathetic to this one. Gawker goofed hard, and rightly paid for it; is that how you want people to view the shuttering of these two news orgs?
There are plenty of local blogs out there that cover fairly low-level neighborhood news. They don't have massive readership but I see them shared all over facebook when they publish something interesting. The best part about it is the writers are mostly doing it as a hobby.
These newspapers were already losing money. He was paying for them out of his personal wealth. Forming a union is going to drive costs up, not down. They basically wanted to take more money out of his pocket. I would have closed them also.
No one can force you to sell your news organization. No can make you take it public. No one can make you take investor money. Anyone can register a domain and start a news organization. This is not "stuff that matters".
If they can't compete, they should go out of business. Save the trees.
Anyway - these alt weeklies are hardly journalism. And this Slashdot post is basically ad nauseam of the kind of collectivist crap we've had to deal with here for a while.
Finally - join a union, don't expect the business owner to role over anymore. Why should they put up with it.
Using money to take control of media. It worked for Gawker. Gawker's pretty well disliked for their tabloid journalism, but they did a lot of real journalism on the side and used the tabloid stuff to pay for it. That's why Thiel shut them down. They'd done exposes into some of his dirty dealings in finance (and no, it wasn't because they outed him as gay).
So get used to this. When they can't crush they'll buy and vice versa. If you want the kind of muck racking that shines a light on the bad parts of the world you've got to pay for it somehow. That used to be the tabloids, but folks seem to have forgotten that, and all that's left is corporate propaganda paid for to push their message.
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Now they have a union, buy a website and go employee owned. They were propped up by a billionaire until they were profitable, now capatalize on those contacts and get to work making real journalism. The future of capatilism is employee ownership. Because billionaires don't give a f.
Please. A guy who's using his personal cash to prop up money-losing city-branded "news" web sites decides that there's no prospect of the operations continuing, especially if his employees decide to install the overhead associated with paying union bosses and having to treat every employee as if they are all equally productive, motivated, resourceful, dedicated, and generally as valuable as the next. So he bows to the inevitable and shuts down to stop the bleeding. The OP, of course, has to spin this as Eeeevil Corporatism and the usual histrionics.
I wonder how the OP feels about the fact that the National Geographic media operation was quickly and spectacularly swirling the toiled and about to fold and take hundreds of jobs with it, without a single white knight showing up to bail them out and fix what was broken, except for (horror! tragedy!) Rupert Murdoch. Now they're back on their feet and solvent and writers, photographers, production people and the rest still have jobs there. Eeeeevil corporatism! Except it wouldn't have been evil if a notably lefty billionaire had used one of his companies to buy NatGeo, in which case that would have been great for journalism and everything else, la la la.
Paying professional people to produce media for an audience is a business. If it can't survive without generous patronage, then it needs to die and be reborn as part of someone's foundation or other personal project, or simply die because it can't produce the value that everyone working there wants to take home every week. Buggy whip factories, etc.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Heard an interview with one of the employees on the radio earlier this week.
The way it was done was a deliberate slap in the face to the employees.
There's some debate already whether Joe Ricketts violated labor laws.
I've no doubt he can show internet journalism isn't profitable. And anyone paying attention in 2008 (when he got into it) knew that, too.
The benefit Joe Ricketts gets from a "newspaper" is a place to shout from and a tax write off. It was never going to be profitable.
It was done a week after writers unionized and the last message shouted from the "newspaper" was crystal fscking clear:
You vote union? We vote scorched earth.
Now. Anybody else who still has a job--do you want a union?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Joe Ricketts and others like him need to learn what it's like to eat out of a dumpster for a change.
Just a reminder that 'Freedom of the Press' just means that the government can't officially sensor your speech. It in no way gives you a right to have your voice heard. In practical terms it's not the 'right' for you to have to be give access to an actual printing press or by extension a news paper column, it's just that the government can't keep you from owning one without the due course of law.
If you can't get people to listen to you enough then that's your problem, and complaining about it on Slashdot is more than useless. You might have a case for anti unionizing practices, but that's a different story all together.
Everything on today's front page was posted by EditorDavid and most of them are from anonymous sources and slightly reek in some way.
Is Slashdot a victim of the same war?
Guy is running a newpaper that loses money. A change is put through that will make him lose considerably more money. So he decides it's not worth it. I am shocked.
Joe Ricketts carried those ungrateful, entitled fucks long enough. He has no moral obligation at all to keep paying them when they're not producing.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
There's some debate already whether Joe Ricketts violated labor laws.
What labor law would that be? As you say, he can prove that the entire venture was loosing money. He closed it all down. You think that, just because the employees voted to unionize, the NLRB can force a company to remain open? It would be one thing if he fired all the employees and hired new ones. If he simply winds down the entire company, there isn't much a lawsuit is going to do.
Now. Anybody else who still has a job--do you want a union?
I've only had experience with a unionized position three times. All three times I was screwed over by nepotism, organizational politics and either lies or incompetence by the union reps. So no, no union for me thank you.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
We all assumed you did.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Though I guess it's hard to imagine that a left-wing news organization would be biased in favor of other left-wing journalists.
Puh-lease!
FTFY
You are welcome on my lawn.
Hell, maybe the market never even existed. I suspected for a long time that many very wealthy left-leaning individuals were using these "news" sites as a way to push their agenda.
I guess losing money to push an agenda no one wants to hear becomes tiring after a while.
When my dad went into the hospital we ended up throwing his unopened newspapers away. A free local paper and we didn't even bother taking them out the plastic sleeve. It's littered with ads, the content isn't relevant, and it's not how people get news anymore.
Billionaire ownership of the media is a separate problem. The idea that money equals speech has unfortunately become deeply ingrained.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I am SURE they will all get better jobs with Amazon or Facetwit.
This strikes me as a "look at me" attempt by Newsweek, to hold themselves up as too big (to important) to fail, perhaps laying down a marker for government funding when the publication reaches a point of imminent financial failure.
This may come as a shock to you, but Trump is part of the 1%, and like those before him, his policies benefit the 1%.
Many people devote large amounts of time to their hobbies. Since electronic journalism is cheap, we should enable the "ambulance chasers" in all of us to post local news stories replete with cellphone photos. Admit it - Aside from investigative journalism, journalism is not that hard to do. It's like writing an eighth grade report.
Billionaires propped up these failing ventures longer than they would have otherwise existed.
As far as I know he didn't violate labour laws. You can't block Unions but you can choose not to continue running your business... and then open another one across the street after you close the one you're in... it happened.
It's often difficult to pivot with a business and failure to do so is why we are seeing businesses go under today. Local reporting doesn't have to die- but the business model local news papers have relied on may need to be replaced or otherwise adapted to make it work financially. I'm involved exclusively in reporting on local news in New Hampshire. I film important issues at the state house regularly, police abuse (which you'll NEVER see stock reporters doing, not on the street anyway), unconstitutional police check points, local politics, businesses, corruption, and similar. How many stories have you written that have gone viral? From sleeping cops to riots we've covered it and major intentional press swarmed in because of the work I've involved in. Stuff that would have never been reported on if not for a working local news business model.
You still seem to be laboring under the delusion that either side is less in the pocket of the 1% than the other. Both just work for different parts of the aristocracy.
The only difference is which particular billionaires profit.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The crux of the problem is that these "news org" businesses don't have a viable business model when companies (like Facebook, Apple, Google, etc.) extract their tax from the ecosystem. The current ecosystem tax is simply too high for them to receive enough revenue.
Even credit card companies learned they needed to throw a bone to small businesses to keep some semblance of diversity around, but the internet giants don't seem to give a shit.
It's his money, they worked for him, half the sentiment here is n that he must continue to spend it because he is rich... socialism much?
Yes, I know, with a computer.
see if I can get my IQ down under 40. I'm already stupid.
If your brain activity was any lower, doctors would legally be able to harvest your organs.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
There were a hundred writers, so we can estimate at least another 50 employees selling ads, doing to accounting, running the servers, etc. So minimum $150,000 / month for salaries. Employee benefits, payroll taxes, office space, etc would be at least $50,000 / month. So bare minimum expenses $200,000 / month. Revenue was about $110,000/ month. Why would the writers want to work another job to support the $80,000 / month such a site loses, and work at the new employee-owned company?
But now that the advertising revenue has shriveled the public do not appear to be willing to pay to read about the local flower show, a traffic accident, what the Mayor did last week or who married whom. If you were involved in any local event, you probably already know about it. If you weren't you probably don't care - and aren't willing to pay to find out about it.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Sigh.
There are indeed billionaires waging a war on real journalism. Specifically: George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Eric Schmidt, Rupert Murdoch, and all the rest who own and operate the dying MSM rags.
If there's a demand.. something else will rise to fill it. If there's no actual demand, then it won't really be missed.
TMZ already does this. Ironically they sometimes break news before the big guys because they can afford the reporters. I don't remember the exact numbers, but a NYTimes reporter was lamenting how TMZ had like a dozen reporters at the LA courthouse all the time and the NYT's only had one occasionally. TMZ will pay for tips which also gives them an advantage according the NYT reporter. Interesting times. And yes, full disclosure, I check out TMZ's website from time to time to see if they got a scoop.
"It" happened because "it" didn't really happen and you can't prove it.
You can shut the business down and open a different business later. That part is no problem.
The problem, or lack of problem, comes down to the actual decision to close it and if they left some sort of trail that makes it clear it was shut down over the union. It has nothing to do with if the business was shut down, or if you started a new one; it comes down to why, and what was documented about that question.
Retaliation over labor organizing is illegal, but failing after labor organizes isn't. Nor is trying again later. But shutting them down because labor organizes is illegal. So it depends largely on if he said stupid shit to his employees while trying to talk them out of unionizing. If he said stupid shit he might be screwed. And all I know about the guy is: he's saying stupid shit now, on the same subject.
By not coming to work after they were fired.
In all probability you IQ was already that low -- the chosen name is sufficient evidence of that
Enjoy your life
Everybody does something wrong every now and then. And if all else fails just buy their parent company. That's the trouble with billionaires. You give somebody that much money they can do whatever they want.
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There is little to no need for unions in the western world today.
It's not that these papers were some kind of sweat shop with underage employees working long hours in unsafe conditions and getting exploited.
And it's a federal offense.
This DOJ will be unlikely to do anything, but it times gone past...
Sigh. It's the dark ages all over again
Boy the way Glenn Miller played
Songs that made the hit parade.
Guys like us we had it made,
Those were the days.
And you knew who you were then,
Girls were girls and men were men,
Mister we could use a man
Like Herbert Hoover again.
Didn't need no welfare state,
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days.
Archie is laughing his ass off!
The original Wonkette wasn't fired. Gawker's site made her so famous that she landed a book deal, and left the site to focus on promoting her book-writing career.
I agree with that the style of Gawker's blogs - Valleywag was another one of them - was extremely entertaining while also being informative with occasional bursts of actual investigative journalism.
For years they have written biased, misleading and complete bullshit. Now they are reaping the rewards of what they sowed. I hope they go the way of the dodo.
If they can't compete, they should go out of business. Save the trees.
Anyway - these alt weeklies are hardly journalism. And this Slashdot post is basically ad nauseam of the kind of collectivist crap we've had to deal with here for a while.
Finally - join a union, don't expect the business owner to role over anymore. Why should they put up with it.
You know, although I'm French so not the same country, I'm pissed that newspaper declined in size (physical size of the object, quantity or length of articles) and I'm fed up reading the same websites over and over too, lonely and at home.
I would so much like a pure black and white newspaper, with lots of small letters like they used to do in 20th century and before. Heck, there could be filler content from official sources and partner websites (or the good old obituaries). And a few pages of fiction (both recurring and stand alone short stories) as long as it's not fan fiction porn. Done : I've found a way to fill it with low cost content, then it can have a few high cost stories alongside.
I would be able to read it in a sunny town square, on a bench or by the river, or indoors somewhere not-at-home. We'd share sheets among friends and so on. Then make a paper boat or whatever - if the paper and ink are suitable, you can serve french fries in a newspaper cone.
Nope I don't want to buy a tablet and USB battery to read slashdot and online news (and worry about the hostile locked outdated OS etc., let alone pay a 4G data plan)
I'm going to need proof that Union==more money. It could also be that they weren't going to write stories that were considered unethical and he couldn't stand to lose his soapbox.
Umm... there's no debate " whether Joe Ricketts violated labor laws." And the answer isn't what the activist over-schooled but under-educated agitators think.
Joe Ricketts did precisely what the courts have declared is required to be simultaneously anti-union and fully legal. Look up Textile Workers Union v. Darlington Mfg. Co. After portions of his company voted to unionize, if he wanted to avoid it, he had to shut the whole thing, including the sites/divisions that did not unionize, down. That's what he did.
Some angry columnists making spurious claims does not really mean there is debate. Just pointless noise, of a similar quality to their other writings.
Funny, I just went to MotherJones.com for the first time in ages. I used to read it in the 1980's a lot. You can look up who owns it, funding, advertising issues, political bias, etc. right on the website. More transparent than most.
(I predict a lot of people will not believe what is asserted on Mother Jones about their political bias).
My father worked for a company who's main business was routine servicing of commercial airplane motors and later jet engines. The shop unionized I think sometime in the 1950's. He worked at the same place for 37 years, and being in the union for roughly 25 of those years increased his income by a bunch of money, including benefits. It probably helped the company with a stable roster of employees--good pay and benefits kept they and they stayed profitable.
A few years before he retired the company was bought up by a larger company seeking to expand. In the 1980's the buzzword for large companies was to diversify. A lot of dumb diversification resulted when companies bought other companies in industries they knew nothing about. The new company was also known as a union busting company. 10 years later, the union was busted by moving to another, and the company was almost busted (broke) as the new owners decided to get out of the business that was 95% of their income. The industry had changed; I'm betting the new owners couldn't adapt well to the changes
Back around the time my father's shop was unionized, my best friend and his family up and disappeared overnight. I was 8 years old, circa 1958-1960. A few years later my mother told me the father was working to unionize the brewery he worked at. The FBI showed up at their house one day, and told him the brewery had put out a "hit" on him, and they whole family disappeared into some FBI witness protection something or other. I guess the mother had enough time to say some quick goodbyes.
Keep "fighting for $15" morons. Threatening to unionize, etc. At some point, it's more cost effective to simply shut the whole thing down rather than deal with the never-ending stream of union nonsense. And don't even get me started on the governmental idiocy that ensues when employees decide to unionize, etc... Guy made the right call for his finances. Shut it down. Sell the assets off. Fire everyone. Buh bye. Have a nice life and figure out your own path forward... go start a blog, hire some people, and risk your own capital if you think you can make a go of it.
Worse, for a full 20 hours after the news broke, Gothamist.com and DNAinfo.com effectively didn't exist: Any link to the sites showed only Ricketts's statement about his decision, which claims the business was not profitable enough to support the journalism.
"Effectively didn't exist"? You mean the archives were gone. Which is bad, I agree, but is that really worse than closing the business without even making an attempt to sell it?
Nope, no sig
Can the (supposed) editors stop confusing the headlines with the editorials? It's beginning to get rather annoying. And they might want to get a platform shoe for the left foot.
Newspapers haven't been killed by the big, bad, evil, rich conservatives.
They died because, in response to the arrival of the internet, editors all freaked out, lost their shit, and adopted the click-bait, tabloid model.
Take a look at your local newspaper and chances are that 9 out of 10 articles are fluff pieces that have little or nothing to do with news or investigative journalism (I'm referring to articles written by the newspaper staff itself, not wire stories). I did a side-by-side comparison of WaPo to the National Enquirer one day and, I shit you not, they really weren't that different.
Sadly, in my market (Seattle), the only place where you can still get journalism is from the local TV news stations (one local station has been digging into some really shady shit going on at the Hanford Site). The last remaining local newspaper, however, is worthless. Their view of journalism tends toward stories with headlines that read "Which Neighborhood in Seattle is the Most Liberal."
If local newspapers were to turn their ship around and get back to true investigative journalism and unbiased news reporting (sticking only to the who, what, where, etc. questions and leaving out opinion), then I would subscribe again in a heartbeat.
There's about 10 full pages of advertising in every issue advertising pot purchase locations, so there's your answer right there.
And when you get down to the fundamentals of it, it was always supposed to be 'workers owning the means of production' so that they could EARN CAPITAL, not so that the country could become a welfare state. The trick was the economic collapse instilled by that quasi-egalitarian society allowed the surviving/winning side oligarchs of communist countries to consolidate power while the plebs were too concerned with getting their meal for the day/week and making sure they produced enough to survive the winter while the 'management' strata found no shortages of food or wealth for themselves.
Neither 'socialist' nor 'capitalist' countries have been intended for their regular citizens prosperity, in forever. While some claw their way up to success, both systems are designed to keep the moral and hard working down. Only the sly, amoral, and diligent get ahead (diligent either in the sense of working hard themselves, or more often using their slyness and amorality to convince others to do the work/take the fall for them.)
You vote union? We vote scorched earth.
- that's the way it should be. That's the way *everybody* should do it to stop this cancer of socialism, of unions, of anything that steals private property rights.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Fuck unions and fuck governments. Fuck you too obviously for supporting this insanity that a property owner cannot do whatever he wishes with his property when a bunch of thieves decide to pillage it.
MY OTHER COMMENTS