Two of my favorite online news website announced they are closing down.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/nyregion/dnainfo-gothamist-shutting-down.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/nyregion/dnainfo-gothamist-shutting-down.html
RIP Gothamist and DNA Info
- Thread starter ifmanis5
- Start date
Seems crazy that unionizing cost them their jobs, but if they aren't turning a profit, tough to see the point.
I've never been a big pro-union guy, especially for smaller groups, but I can see their side after reading Marvin Miller's A Whole Different Ball Game.
I have friends that work in various industries that have unions and most of them hate being unionized.
Either way, it sucks that a good site is closing its doors.
Edit 1:
Ricketts wikipedia page has been updated:
John Joseph "Joe" Ricketts (born July 16, 1941) is a legitimately horrible person who is going to hell, if it exists. He is a horrible union buster and worth over a billion dollars himself.[4]
Edit 2:
John Joseph "Joe" Ricketts (born July 16, 1941) is a talking wall of feces and fat merged together in iceberg form. Supposedly, he's also an American businessman.
Fun to watch these change in real time
I've never been a big pro-union guy, especially for smaller groups, but I can see their side after reading Marvin Miller's A Whole Different Ball Game.
I have friends that work in various industries that have unions and most of them hate being unionized.
Either way, it sucks that a good site is closing its doors.
Edit 1:
Ricketts wikipedia page has been updated:
John Joseph "Joe" Ricketts (born July 16, 1941) is a legitimately horrible person who is going to hell, if it exists. He is a horrible union buster and worth over a billion dollars himself.[4]
Edit 2:
John Joseph "Joe" Ricketts (born July 16, 1941) is a talking wall of feces and fat merged together in iceberg form. Supposedly, he's also an American businessman.
Fun to watch these change in real time
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Ricketts only bought Gothamist back in March. At the time I thought it was a big mistake for Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung to sell to Ricketts. Pretty petulant move; wonder if there's any recourse. There was no reason for them to shut down the archives as well. Gothamist would occasionally have great long form stories, and I enjoyed many of the photo essays, particularly the slideshows of NYC in various historical eras.
Yet another reason to hate the Cubs. Also, if you go to his Wikipedia page and refresh for a couple of minutes there seems to be a running battle between those wishing to make his bio more colorful and those who want it in its original state.
I was talking to Jake about the sale a couple of weeks ago, he was pretty torn up about giving his baby up, and particularly about having to side with management in the unionization fight. But it's not like Ricketts was an unknown quantity- he knew who he was getting into bed with. My wife's a childhood friend of his and says that his parents are hardcore lefties (I believe his father's a labor lawyer), so it might make for an awkward Thanksgiving in the Dobkin home.
Based on what Jake said and his tone in saying it, I'm not shocked that this happened, but I'm surprised by the speed and manner in which it was done. Sucks for all the writers who can't even access the archives while they look for work. I'm gonna miss the sites, Gothamist in particular. It was a daily visit for me with a fun commentariat. Fuck Ricketts.
Not sure what recourse can be had. If you have a not profitable business, I'm not aware of anyway you can force someone to keep spending their money to keep it going, even if the owner is a billionaire.
Kind of the same issue with the archives too. Who pays for the server space and continued costs. Now I'm sure there are many people/organizations that would do it at no cost to anyone but themselves, but I'm sure Ricketts is thinking it's his property and he can do with it as he sees fit.
Joe Ricketts presumably did his due diligence and concluded that Gothamist represented a good investment when he bought it only 7 months ago, not sure that anything about the business model has changed in that short time except for the union vote. It may in fact not be profitable, but I certainly wouldn't just take his word for it. Maybe the economics don't work for him if he has to deal with a unionized workforce, but you just don't pull the plug a week later without exploring a sale or other options on a popular site that gets a ton of eyeballs. And combine it with shutting down the archives immediately without notice, and it really looks like a move made purely out of spite. As others around the web have noted, he could just leave the site up with minimal maintenance and keep generating ad revenues to cover the servers. This just looks like a dick move to prevent the longtime Gothamist writers from accessing their work when applying for other jobs.
They might not have any recourse, but if I were one of the veteran writers there I'd be looking into hiring a labor lawyer to see about getting access to any work they hadn't saved from the archives at a minimum.
I remember having a bad feeling about it when they announced the sale in March and Jake wrote about how the tone of the site wouldn't change and that that this would give them the ability to grow. Jake and Jen really got roasted for it at the time in the comment sections, but things eventually calmed down and got back to normal, which makes this abrupt ending even more jarring. I found myself going to it less in recent months, but there was still a decent amount of good content there. I obviously don't know Jake but I feel like I know his background and upbringing from all the times he wrote about it in those "Ask a Native New Yorker" pieces which were always accompanied by a funny childhood photo.
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He's
The more interesting story is whether the leaders of the unionizing effort knew this was a credible possibility of the vote went through. In which case they should also be called out. Because they just cost several people a source of income.
Unionized employees is a significant business model change given I imagine they were getting by on razor thin margins already, which is probably a pretty generous assumption. It's a newspaper that isn't operating with any defeee of scale so any increase in expenses is going to throw things out of whack for the foreseeable future. It's not that surprising at all that Ricketts said "Fuck it" and cut his losses of something he has no attachment to instead of dealing with a several year headache of trimming costs when dealing with unionized employees.
The more interesting story is whether the leaders of the unionizing effort knew this was a credible possibility of the vote went through. In which case they should also be called out. Because they just cost several people a source of income.
Without a doubt. At the end of the day it's HIS business. He's under no obligation to continue with this venture regardless of emotional attachment by others. Somebody gambled and lost. Big time.
Rich liberals and rich conservatives don't get rich by running businesses at a loss. This reads to me as much more of a business issue than a political issue of trying to stifle unions. Unions are expensive.
Of course that's not as fun as the conspiracy theory of Ricketts buying a liberal newspaper just so he can shut it down because he's rich and conservative so he must be evil and is probably sitting in a lair drinking brandy in front of a fireplace while stroking a white cat. But I don't think that's very likely because, again, adding a union to a declining industry with already thin margins isn't good business.
Yeah That's not what I said he did at all, but thanks for running the standard "turn everything into a conspiracy theory" playbook on me it's really great I love it.
Yeah, this sucks but it's hard to see a villain in it, other than 'rich guys gonna rich.' The NYTimes article about this specifically said that the paper has already operated at a loss every month since Rickett's bought it, and that the additional losses that would have come post-Unionization were only a part of the decision. I'm pretty far left, especially on economic matters, but even I can't fault him that much. Maybe you can try and fix the monetization structure, but that's not the way that most of these enterprises go, and even more rarely does it work.
If anything, this just highlights again how vital it is to continue and support public media like NPR and CPB, to provide some line between information availability and profitability.
If anything, this just highlights again how vital it is to continue and support public media like NPR and CPB, to provide some line between information availability and profitability.
The tone and phrasing of saying he closed them for unionizing reads like it was an ideological decision because of unionization instead of an economic decision because of unionization. It was obviously a bit hyperbolic if the rest of the paragraph didn't give you any indication so calm down with the victim card.
When you're as rich as the Ricketts, closing down a site because paying a decent pension or health benefit might increase your losses is ideological.
No it's not. If he tried to shut down the union vote that would be ideological. Unions don't make sense for all companies and industries.
You don't get rich pissing away money on bad businesses. Maybe he thought a few changes in how they operated could turn the businesses into slight money makers, figured out that wasn't happening, and that employees unionizing was going to ensure it would never be profitable again. That is a legitimate reason for him to close down the business, no matter how much you wish businesses were run for the employees instead of the owners. He put the cash up, he's on the hook for the losses, he gets to make the decisions and take the profits.
I feel less informed about NYC today. It's hard to find the kind of micro and local reporting DNA and Gothamist were doing. This is a blow to journalism.
If enough people felt the same way as you, they would have been able to charge more for advertising and it wouldn't be shut down (if it were really shut down for economic reasons).
looks like the old stuff is still available: http://gothamist.com
Your last sentence is literally pure and unadulteralted ideology. Unions don't make sense for people who see workers as slaves to their yen.
That's not what I'm saying at all but continue on with your musings Mr. Marx.
I guess, but what's the alternative, require him to continue to fund losses when he longer wants to do so?
No problem, Milton.
Well, we could maybe try seeing how the site runs with a unionized workforce first. Nobody unionizes to kill their company.
Who is we in that sentence? Im completely on board with the workforce of the company going out to try and attract new capital and start a different website if that's what you are getting at.
Ricketts might be a terrible person and the decision might be completely ideological (deleting the archives suggests that was the case), but there's not really a remedy when someone decides not to continue to operate a business.
Ricketts might be a terrible person and the decision might be completely ideological (deleting the archives suggests that was the case), but there's not really a remedy when someone decides not to continue to operate a business.
Okay I’ll be more direct, what is Rickett’s obligation to running this publication? Several people have asked the question and you have yet to even come close to remotely answering it.
He is obligated to give the employees and anybody else who wants to buy the company time and opportunity to do so, rather than be a petulant fucking baby because his employees want a say in how the most relevant institution to their lives is run and precisely how it affects their material needs.
He isn't going to go bankrupt, and there isn't even proof that the company would become unprofitable/unsustainable because, afaik, no list of demands in collective bargaining has been made or shown.
Rich people have a responsibility to the people they employ not to turn them onto the street because they lost their binky.
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To play devil's advocate here, we have no idea what discussions took place between Rickett and the worker's representatives leading up to the vote. Rickett could well have told them that he was losing too much money already and that a Yes vote would force him to pull the plug on the enterprise and the employees decided to call his bluff. At least one article I read had a quote from an employee who admitted that they knew this was a possibility.
According to the New York Times, DNAinfo lost money every month since Ricketts started it, 9 years ago. The vote was strictly for the Writer's Guild, so it was only going to affect 27 out the 115 DNA/Gothamist employees. Anyone thinking that either the purchase of Gothamist or Ricketts taking his ball and going home were purely financial decisions is either grossly uninformed or deluding themselves. As far as his obligations, I dunno, just because spite was a factor doesn't mean that it wasn't his right to do what he did, and it doesn't necessarily mean those currently looking for work have any recourse beyond their severance packages. It just means that Ricketts is a dickhead.
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Who is obligated to fund the losses during the ongoing sales process? I mean, I pretty much agree he's acting like a petulant baby by taken down the archives, but Im not comfortable at all with forcing him to run an unprofitable business.
It's a business, not a puppy. He is under no obligation to find it a good home.
From the NY Times article above:
I was laid off from two different companies in the late '00s as the companies shut down divisions or operations entirely, and the above is a far more generous package than I received either time. There may be local laws that dictate these terms but I'd hardly call that being turned out into the street.
They don’t have a responsibility to do so in the slightest, outside of severance packages if applicable. That is more the role of the government through various programs that help people that fall on hard times.
I agree with the general idea that business owners don't have the absolute obligation to anyone to keep the business going if they don't want to. But Gothamist filled an important space in the NY news/editorial scene, and I don't see its replacement. Also the deletion of anti-Ricketts posts when he bought the site and the weird thanks that the Gothamist founders gave to Ricketts for shuttering their site stinks. I don't have anything to substantiate this, but it smells like Gawker/Thiel or something similar.
Thanks to public radio, Gothamist and a few of the other blogs live again!
https://www.wired.com/story/gothamist-dcist-laist-return-wnyc-public-radio
