Billionaire Joe Ricketts announced Thursday that New York City news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist are shutting down, citing financial struggles just a week after employees voted to unionize.
Reporters and editors at DNAinfo and Gothamist voted to unionize last week. Local news sites owned by Ricketts in Washington, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago will also go dark. The websites’ archives have also been completely wiped, leaving no trace of past articles.
“DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure,” Ricketts wrote in a letter posted to the websites. “And while we made 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’m hopeful that in time, someone will crack the code on a business that can support exceptional neighborhood storytelling for I believe telling these stories remains essential,” he added.
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