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.

Comments

Exactly - they already had negative pnl

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Exactly - they already had negative pnl

[Anonymous Coward]

I work at a company that is owned by the employees and we are in dire, dire need of a union. The thing is, while employees may have ownership shares held for them in a trust, they have no say in any of the business decisions and the shares of stock function in no way that gives them any votes or power of any kind. The company is run in a dictatorial fashion for the most part, and all decisions that hurt employees on a daily basis are justified because it supposedly will benefit their ownership stake. People are quickly let go should they complain. Union is a dirty word, but we really, really need one and we shouldn't in this situation.

Re:Not a war on Journalism. War on unionization

[JBMcB]

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.

Re:Local Blogs

[currently_awake]

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.

Re:Local Blogs

[Migraineman]

There's an old adage - "Facts are reported; news is produced." You might want to try to comprehend the subtle difference between the two.