WHAT?!?! NO!!!

DNAInfo and Gothamist Shut Down Week After Unionizing

“Businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure,” said CEO Joe Ricketts.

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.