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Ridiculously rich man shuts down DNAinfo and Gothamist after employees unionize

Billionaire Joe Ricketts has thrown a temper tantrum so big he shut his own company down.

Colin Daileda

on November 2, 2017

UPDATE: Nov. 3, 2017, 2:18 p.m. EDT Gothamist, DNAinfo, and other sister sites were put back online on Friday afternoon.

UPDATE: Nov. 3, 2017, 10:03 a.m. EDT Quartz reports that Gothamist's chief technical officer has said Gothamist's archives were not deleted, and there is a good chance they will be restored.

Billionaire Joe Ricketts has thrown a temper tantrum so big he shut his own company down.

Ricketts—the founder of Ameritrade, whose children own the Chicago Cubs, and whose wealth is estimated at around $2.1 billion—closed down local New York City news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist on Thursday, as well as websites in a variety of other cities including Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.

After a months-long battle, employees at the recently-merged news outlets voted to become members of Writers Guild of America East about a week ago.

"This is a direct retaliation for unionizing," former DNAinfo reporter Noah Hurowitz told Mashable. "We stood tall, and they fucked us."

Later, he said DNAinfo is the "most badass, toughest group of people I've ever worked with, and we're not gonna run away."

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When the employees unionized around a week ago, DNAinfo reporter Katie Honan told The New York Times that “No one’s trying to bankrupt anybody." She added, "We just want to have an ability to negotiate things, and not necessarily money. If this is the future of journalism, it should be a career for people, not a postcollege hobby.”

Ricketts pleaded a lack of economic viability in a statement on Thursday.

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The archives for DNAinfo, Gothamist, and other Ricketts-owned sites were inaccessible, and those two sites and all links redirected to Ricketts's statement. In that statement, Ricketts wrote that he believes neighborhood storytelling "remains essential." Just not, evidently, essential enough for him to fund.

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Ricketts, a donor to President Donald Trump, had long been the CEO of DNAinfo, but acquired Gothamist and its sister sites in other cities back in March. Around the time of acquisition, Gothamist and Chicagoist deleted negative coverage of Ricketts.

Journalists -- those who worked there and many others -- were stunned, saddened, and thankful for what the websites had meant to themselves and the communities they'd covered.

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What else is there to say but that.

UPDATE Nov. 2, 6:17 p.m. PT: A new site went up after the Gothamist/DNAinfo announcement: rickettsist.com.

The parody site looks like the now-defunct Gothamist, SFist, LAist, and other local news sites, but features Ricketts. A short intro article says this is "the only site where you can get up-to-date news and information about Joe Ricketts, the owner of some news sites that you can’t access anymore!"

Colin Daileda

Colin is Mashable's US & World Reporter. He previously interned at Foreign Policy magazine and The American Prospect. Colin is a graduate from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. When he's not at Mashable, you can most likely find him eating or playing some kind of sport.