DNAinfo And Gothamist Have Been Shut Down, Owner Announces

NEW YORK, NY — Local news outlets DNAinfo and Gothamist have been shut down by owner Joe Ricketts a week after the New York City newsrooms voted to unionize, Ricketts announced Thursday.

Ricketts said he made the "difficult decision" to close the websites because they were not economically viable. DNAinfo and Gothamist also had outlets in Chicago which too have closed. Gothamist's stable included Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington DC.

"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," Ricketts said in a statement.

Nowhere in Ricketts' statement was it mentioned that editorial staffers of both websites in New York voted overwhelmingly to unionize last week. Of the 27 staff members who voted in a National Labor Relations Board election, 25 voted in favor of joining Writers Guild of America East, the guild announced in a press release.

In an email sent to staff in April, a copy of which was seen by Patch, DNAinfo's Chief Operating Officer Dan Swartz suggested Ricketts might close the sites if workers unionized.

"Would a union be the final straw that caused the business to be closed?" he wrote. "I don't know. But it’s important that everyone keep in mind that this is not a business where ownership is keeping more than its fair share of the profits."

DNAinfo has never returned a profit.

DNAinfo reporter Noah Hurowitz, who was a vocal leader in the effort to unionize, claimed the shutdown was Ricketts' response to the union vote.

"This is an act of direct retaliation for our successful union effort," Hurowitz said on Twitter. "I have no regrets. We did the right thing, stood tall. I am proud."

In September, Ricketts wrote a blog post titled "Why I’m Against Unions At Businesses." In the post, Ricketts wrote that he acknowledges that while "unions served an important purpose," they pose challenges for entrepreneurs such as himself.

"I believe unions promote a corrosive us-against-them dynamic that destroys the esprit de corps businesses need to succeed," Ricketts wrote in the blog post. "And that corrosive dynamic makes no sense in my mind where an entrepreneur is staking his capital on a business that is providing jobs and promoting innovation."

The Writers Guild of America East tweeted a statement Thursday night. "We are deeply concerned by Joe Ricketts' decision to shut down DNAinfo New York and Gothamist," it read.

"...The Guild will be looking at all of our potential areas of recourse and we will aggressively pursue our new members' rights."

Ricketts, a billionaire Republican who opposed Donald Trump in the Presidential primaries but then reportedly gave his campaign $1 million, launched DNAinfo in New York in 2009, expanding to Chicago in 2012. He bought Gothamist in March this year.

Ricketts, who Forbes estimates is worth $2.1 billion, made his fortune by founding the brokerage firm Ameritrade and eventually merged it with TD to form TDAmeritrade. Ricketts is involved in many other business ventures including a bison ranch, a film company and a ski ranch near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The Ricketts family also owns the Chicago Cubs.

The push to unionize began in March this year after several senior DNAinfo staffers were laid off days before Ricketts announced he had purchased Gothamist. The effort was publicly backed by figures including New York City's mayor Bill de Blasio.

De Blasio tweeted Friday: "Joe Ricketts is a coward. He wouldn't last a minute under the intrepid scrutiny of the reporters he employed. What a loss for our city."

The websites were shut down at 5 p.m. Thursday, a DNAinfo source told Patch. The DNAinfo staff were not given advance notice of the shutdown, several sources said, with an email being sent to coincide with the sites going down.

The editorial staff across all DNAinfo and Gothamist sites consisted of 115 journalists, the New York Times reported.

Staff members at both websites thanked supporters on social media Thursday.

"I am sad for New York and all of its neighborhoods," DNAinfo reporter Rachel H. Smith, who covered Brooklyn, said on Twitter. "Thank you for the good wishes. Please keep supporting journalism in any way you can."

Employees of DNAinfo and Gothamist will be placed on administrative leave until Feb. 2, 2018, according to a memo acquired by CNN media reporter Tom Kludt. Staffers will continue to receive their salaries until that date, unless they begin working full-time elsewhere, according to the memo. Ricketts will begin negotiations with the Writers Guild of America East on Friday.

Lead photo of Joe Ricketts by Kris Connor/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images