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New Victims in the 'Billionaire War on Journalism' (newsweek.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the blogs-vs-billionaires dept.

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.

9 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Exactly - they already had negative pnl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re: Exactly - they already had negative pnl by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The news organizations that are more dependent on advertising for their funding tend to be closer to propaganda than news organizations with other funding sources. The ones dependent on advertisers can't really publish anything that might depict those advertisers in a bad light, even in the most minor way. They end up having less freedom, and thus are far more likely to become defenders of their advertisers, rather than objective reporters of fact.

    2. Re:Exactly - they already had negative pnl by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

      You should tell your managers that they are doing it wrong. Harvard Business School did a study of employee owned companies, and found that they generally outperform competitors, but only if employees participated in decision making and felt involved in setting goals and resolving problems.

  2. Horror! Tragedy! Things aren't Permanent! by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  3. Re: Local Blogs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, that's my complaint with them, too. The quality is often total crap, and the bias is thick and obvious. The articles are less about journalism and reporting the facts than they are editorials pushing a narrative or agenda. Some of them are so bad that they make /. look good!

  4. Re:Not a war on Journalism. War on unionization by JBMcB · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.
  5. Re:Hell with them by Opportunist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You ... you really believe that one can get rich by working?

    Hey, folks, gather 'round, I found the dupe that still believes the "American Dream"!

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  6. Re:What utter bullshit. by CrashNBrn · · Score: 5, Informative

    You mean the whole 8 months that Joe Ricketts owned the Gothamist LLC? That has been around for 14 years? Yeah he carried them real far.
    From TFA:

    It was always a strange fit: When Ricketts purchased the 14-year-old Gothamist LLC in March, its flagship website Gothamist quickly decided to delete articles that were critical of its new owner. In recent weeks, the staff took steps to join a union, despite the owner's resistance to the idea. "As long as it’s my money that’s paying for everything," Ricketts wrote in an email to staff in spring, "I intend to be the one making the decisions about the direction of the business.”

  7. Re:Lose your own money by fafalone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    He bought the site just a few months ago. You really think he spent all that money acquiring it, then just realized it wasnt profitable? And then didn't even try to sell it to someone else? Come on.