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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.
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.
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 still have government funded news sites. The BBC and Al-Jazeera both do good work. They might be under pressure to not report negatively on their patron but there are enough of them (with different patrons) to fill in the gaps. The TV networks once funded news sites as a status thing because news isn't profitable.
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.
Look at the sarcastic idiot with a proper name. As usual, the right wing conflates the minor inaccuracy of the major media with the major inaccuracies of the non-major media and tries to draw moral equivalence. I don't know whom to be more disgusted with - idiot right winger here or the morons who modded him up.
By your "news has to be perfect or it's all crap" standard, why should we take time to find out facts at all? Which, of course is the point of your rant - to promote and perpetuate the ignorance of the American populace so people will vote for your side.
That is all.
There's an old adage - "Facts are reported; news is produced." You might want to try to comprehend the subtle difference between the two.