Gothamist, DNAInfo Shut Down Following Vote to Unionize

Gothamist and DNAInfo have both shut down following a vote at the company to unionize and a repeated loss of money.

Attempting to access either site now redirects users to a statement by CEO Joe Ricketts.

“Today, I’ve made the difficult decision to discontinue publishing DNAinfo and Gothamist. Reaching this decision wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t one I made lightly,” declared Ricketts. “I started DNAinfo in 2009 at a time when few people were investing in media companies. But I believed an opportunity existed to build a successful company that would report unbiased neighborhood news and information.”

“These were stories that weren’t getting told, and because I believe people care deeply about the things that happen where they live and work, I thought we could build a large and loyal audience that advertisers would want to reach,” he continued. “A lot of what I believed would happen did, but not all of it.”

Today, DNAinfo and Gothamist deliver news and information each day to over half a million people’s email inboxes; we have over 2 million fans across our social channels; and each month, we have over 15 million visits to our sites by over 9 million people. But more important than large numbers of visits and fans, we’ve reported tens of thousands of stories that have informed, impacted, and inspired millions of people. And in the process, I believe we’ve left the world a better place.

But DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure. And while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn’t been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded. I want to thank our readers for their support and loyalty through the years. And I want to thank our employees for their tireless effort and dedication.

I’m hopeful that in time, someone will crack the code on a business that can support exceptional neighborhood storytelling for I believe telling those stories remains essential.

According to the New York Times, Ricketts “lost money every month of DNAinfo’s existence,” while “the staff’s vote to join the Writers Guild of America East was just part of the decision to close the company.”

“The decision by the editorial team to unionize is simply another competitive obstacle making it harder for the business to be financially successful,” claimed a DNAInfo spokesman.

115 employees are reportedly out of work after the closure of both sites.

“They are getting three months of paid ‘administrative leave’ at full salary, plus four weeks of severance,” explained the Times.

Charlie Nash is a reporter for Breitbart Tech. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington and Gab @Nash, or like his page at Facebook.