DNAInfo and Gothamist Shut Down Week After Unionizing

Famed local news sites Gothamist and DNAInfo were shut down on Thursday, a week after their newsrooms voted to unionize. “DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure,” owner and founder Joe Ricketts—a billionaire mogul who also owns the Chicago Cubs—wrote in a letter. “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.” A spokesperson for the company said the editorial team’s vote to unionize played a role in the decision to shutter the sites. The decision leaves a reported 115 staffers out of work. Ricketts only recently acquired Gothamist in March 2017.