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DNAinfo and Gothamist shut down by Joe Ricketts
- Thread starter ActStriker
- Start date
Even with an adblocker enabled, all of their "sponsored" news stories came through. As a matter of fact, I believe those were the majority of ads on the site. Every 3rd of 4th story was a sponsored story.
I really hated the snarky, cynical writing of my local city's site. I stopped reading regularly years ago because of that. Hopefully the people that wrote for it can come together with a new site and keep delivering local news but get away from the attitude. I'd be happy to support that.
I hope so too, but I can't imagine this incident will decrease cynicism
There's never been an easier time for the "workers" to own a media empire. They're free to recreate the site in this way.
Unfortunately, it takes the billionaire money to keep it running, since they usually don't make money. So how's that gonna work?
True, I understand that. Plus my views are only about unions in manufacturing which most likely aren't much the same for the journalism industry.
NY Times has a great op ed about the shutdown.
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/opinion/dnainfo-gothamist-ricketts-union.html
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/opinion/dnainfo-gothamist-ricketts-union.html
This should put a lot of the debates in this thread to bed. This dude didn't even negotiate with the unionized workers before he decided to pull the plug.
I read SFist every morning and this sucks. The SF people had nothing to do with this and now they all lost their jobs. Seems like an overreaction to just shut the whole thing down.
Gothamist wasn't losing money though. Obviously Ricketts doesn't know how to run a business without running it into the ground. This is toxic capitalism at its worst.
Ok. And gothamist then? Feel free to attempt a rationalization.
How do we know Gothamist was profitable? Are the numbers publicly available somewhere?
Billionaires are billionaires in part because they realize that ideology becomes pragmatism over longer stretches of time. Shutting down a unionized business will make future employees, particularly those working under him, that much less likely to unionize in the future.
If you read the article, Gothamist was purchased by DNAinfo. It wasn't seperate. It was the only part of DNAinfo that wasn't losing money, but DNAinfo as a whole was losing money and had never been in the positive since Ricketts founded the company 8 years ago. That's why the unionization merely sped up the inevitable.
I did read the article dude, were talking about the same thing. I'm very much aware that gothamist was bought by dnainfo. I'm also aware that gothamist was profitable and healthy. That was in MARCH. you're telling me that dnainfo was on death's door either way, when the dudes been running it happily losing whatever money since 2012 to keep it open, (heck he even decided to purchase ANOTHER news outlet)... Unionization just happened to speed it up? It's pretty clear unionization was the only aspect of this that he found unacceptable.
I guess that's one way to look at it. Somehow, a company he founded 8 entire whole years ago, wasn't profitable ever since and then magically the "inevitability" of its closure was "merely sped up" the moment 27 of its 100+ employees voted to unionized? I really don't think this was exclusively about profits. Maybe it played a part in the decision but no where as big a part as Ricketts ideological opposition to unions. and if it was Ricketts didn't even bother going to the negotiating table with the union, determining what their demands were, what sort of effect that would have on the bottomline, and going back and forth with proposals and counter proposals. Maybe they unionized behind better working conditions and higher wages less so. We don't know because he pulled the plug a mere week after the union came into being and not before during one of the company's 8 unprofitable years of existence.
Im not sure where else to go with this if you've dug in so hard that you think it's strange to shut a business down that was losing money for 8 years. Unionizing no doubt sped up its demise but all of this sentiment that it was a WAR ON JOURNALISM, CLOSED OUT OF SPITE is ridiculous.
He held on to it for 8 years and tried to make it work. If he was declaring war on journalism, why did he spend so much time and money trying to make this a profitable business?
I am sure some of it is that many of you want to argue a particular point and you don't care beyond "billionaire trumplestiltzkin closes business and kicks poor journalists out on the street, busts the union, and deprives neighborhoods of vital information" but I spent 4 years of my life working for and 2+ years of school in that business and I know first-hand how tough it is to make local news work. I know guys whose whole lives have been spent moving from paper to paper, city to city, station to station across the US every 3 or 4 years because their outfits either close or downsize, all to continue working in an industry that doesn't pay you shit and requires 60+ hour workweeks routinely. The entire industry is unhealthy. Even the NYT article you say you read goes into detail about how DNAinfo has struggled since its inception but you dismiss that ("..you're telling me that dnainfo was on death's door either way") as if i'm lying about that part. It's right there.
Just because he lost for 8 years doesn't mean that it demonstrates that he clearly didn't care about losing money so therefore it was ONLY because of the union that he shuttered - it just means he tried hard and held on until it became unpalatable to keep doing it. At some point you cut your losses, and 8 years of them is usually beyond most people's breaking point. Throw the unionization on top of that in an already sinking ship of a business....
I've mentioned that unionizing likely sped it up, therefore it definitely is a factor. I guess no one is really reading my posts.
I don't know. Business owners are in the business of making money. They aren't going to shutter something they've put effort into for 8 years if its making them money, union or not. Yes I know someone is going to say WHAT ABOUT GOTHAMIST but that's one unit of a larger outfit, its not a seperate entity or company.
Unionizing isn't the main reason it was finally shut down.
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Lol you keep dismissing gothamist as if it has nothing to do with those it was bought in March and was profitable. Under the same exact financial situation in which he decided to close both of them (dnainfo was no making money in March either!). You say unionization hastened its closing (by it being closed within the week, without him even talking to the union). He scrubbed the archives immediately as well. No attempt to make use of any of the assets through selling or otherwise, just poof the second a union is formed under him.
I mean these are the facts, they're pretty clearly there. We just have to agree to disagree because I can only rearrange them in so many ways to show you what's right there. Maybe one days he'll just come out and say 'i hate unions', although I'm pretty sure that's not far off from what he's actually said (looking for quotes but heading to work). But I have a feeling even if he did come out and confirm exactly what he did you'd still be defending it.
He didn't scrub the archives. The sites all redirected to the closure statement, and the very next day the archived sites went back up, so that's not even true.
I don't know what else to say. I've worked in local news before (WGAU and WWRK, from 1995 - 2001) before you accuse me of lying about that, too) . I know how hard it is to make money there, yet you keep on dismissing that with "you keep dismissing gothamist" and you can't even get the facts of the story we are discussing correct?
I don't know what else to say. I've worked in local news before (WGAU and WWRK, from 1995 - 2001) before you accuse me of lying about that, too) . I know how hard it is to make money there, yet you keep on dismissing that with "you keep dismissing gothamist" and you can't even get the facts of the story we are discussing correct?
I read your posts, EnronERA and I'm choosing disagree with you. I think Ricketts idealogical opposition to unions was a big reason he shut the company down. Perhaps maybe not the reason but a big reason. It was definitely the catalyst. He was more than happy to support the unprofitable company for 8 unprofitable years while boasting about it. He didn't bother negotiating with the union instead he pulled the plug a week after the union formed. I'm not arguing profits didn't play a part in his decision but I do not believe it played a big part.
What Ricketts did was something we've seen other companies do in response to unionizing employees. Target has shutdown entire retail locations "for renovations" (when normally they leave the store open while renovations are going on) to curb employees from unionizing, eating the costs of doing so, and then opening the same location at a later date. We've seen a plays like this made before by other corporations.
Also billionaires investors are happy to invest capital into things that aren't profitable, yet. Tesla motors is bleeding money at this point but Elon Musk can secure investment and funding into whatever science fiction project he dreams of.
What Ricketts did was something we've seen other companies do in response to unionizing employees. Target has shutdown entire retail locations "for renovations" (when normally they leave the store open while renovations are going on) to curb employees from unionizing, eating the costs of doing so, and then opening the same location at a later date. We've seen a plays like this made before by other corporations.
Also billionaires investors are happy to invest capital into things that aren't profitable, yet. Tesla motors is bleeding money at this point but Elon Musk can secure investment and funding into whatever science fiction project he dreams of.
I think EnronERA's point was that the fact it wasn't making any money is why he just chose to shut it down. If it had been profitable when they decided to unionize he probably wouldn't have shut it down. The union is definitely why he chose to shut it down now though instead of waiting a few years to see if the gothamist acquisition would help profitability. I mean lets be honest though he hadn't negotiated with the union at all but I have never seen a situation where a union came in a didn't increase employee costs. If it was struggling to bring in revenue on slave wages it definitely wasn't going to be able to do it on livable wages.
Understandable but even if he claims to be against unions ideologically we can look at his past behavior and see that he doesn't seem to care much about ideology when it comes to making money.
again, curbing the likelihood of unions in future endeavors is a long-term move for profit
"he wouldn't bust the union because he likes money" doesn't fly for me when so many CEOs understand that even just passively allowing a broader trend of unionization to gain momentum is damaging to their long-term profits
"he wouldn't bust the union because he likes money" doesn't fly for me when so many CEOs understand that even just passively allowing a broader trend of unionization to gain momentum is damaging to their long-term profits