A week ago, reporters and editors in the combined newsroom of DNAinfo and Gothamist, two of New York City’s leading digital purveyors of local news, celebrated victory in their vote to join a union. On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down.
justjoan wrote:this is very disappointing news; and i'm sure the new york staff joining a union was just the final straw for ricketts, not a man i want to support in any way.... but i depended on the neighborhood dna news to keep me informed and will miss it. right now, the weird thing is that i've been trying to read yesterday's dna chicago email but regardless of which article i click on, all i get is ricketts's letter announcing the closing. i thought there was some kind of glitch, so i even restarted my computer, but he's shut down the most recent article (dated wednesday, 9:11am) and won't let anyone read it....
bweiny wrote:How was the post political? There's no advocacy in it. It's one poster's self-reported experience. Honestly, calling it political was as political as the post itself.
Six months ago, reporters and editors at DNAinfo-Gothamist announced their intent to join the Writers Guild of America, East. This is the union that my colleagues and I at Gawker Media joined in 2015, and the union that has organized major online media companies like HuffPost, Vice Media, Slate and Thrillist in the past two years. In that short amount of time, unionized “new media” workers have won substantial raises, editorial protections and other improvements that writers at more mature companies take for granted.
DNAinfo Chicago will be reborn as Block Club Chicago, relying on blockchain and subscriptions instead of billionaires