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from the Retaliation?-or-Post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc? dept.
DNAinfo and Gothamist Are Shut Down After Vote to Unionize
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.
At 5 p.m., a post went up on the sites from Mr. Ricketts announcing the decision. He praised them for reporting "tens of thousands of stories that have informed, impacted and inspired millions of people." But he added, "DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure."
[...] in the financially daunting era of digital journalism, there has been no tougher nut to crack than making local news profitable, a lesson Mr. Ricketts, who lost money every month of DNAinfo's existence, is just the latest to learn. In New York City, the nation's biggest media market, established organizations such as The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal and The Daily News have slashed staff or withdrawn from street-level reporting. The Voice stopped publishing its print edition in September.
What about The Daily Planet and Gotham Globe?
Gothamist's NY Writing Staff Votes to Unionize; Owner Shutters All *ist Sites
Deadspin reports:
Joe Ricketts, TD Ameritrade founder, billionaire, and father of Chicago Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, shut down the local news network of DNAinfo and Gothamist sites today, a week after the writers voted to unionize.
[...] With the sites' articles functionally locked, the reported 115 newly jobless writers now have no clips [to which they can refer potential employers] as they search for work.
Deadspin has scathing comments about Ricketts's explanation for his action.
The Los Angeles Daily News reports:
Angelenos hoping to read the latest local reporting from LAist.com [on November 2] were instead greeted by a letter from the news site's CEO, announcing he had shuttered the parent media company and all of its local news sites.
[...] [Ricketts bought news company DNAinfo in 2010 and, in March 2017, DNAinfo] purchased Gothamist, which ran news sites in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington D.C.
[...] Julia Wick, editor-in-chief at LAist, [...] said she and her Los Angeles team supported the New York staff's decision to unionize. Originally, she said, all five Gothamist sites planned to join the union, but the Chicago newsroom dropped out, ending the collective effort.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 07 2017, @02:03AM (2 children)
Yup. My suggested dept. line was
from the capitalist-ownership-model dept.
Want your opinion to count? Become the owner.
Can't do that on your own? Form a worker-owned cooperative.
My Original Submission #2 [soylentnews.org] also contained some razor wire from the Deadspin writer.
The S/N editor blunted that in the summary.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 07 2017, @02:29AM (1 child)
Or anything in between, yes. Capitalism allows for any number of owners in any power distribution you can come up with. And it's entirely voluntary. Ain't it grand?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 07 2017, @11:35PM
You seem to be saying that Socialism/worker-owned co-ops are not.
In a worker-owned cooperative, every worker has a vote and ever vote is equal to any other vote.
If you're not a worker in the operation, you don't get a vote.
(There is no Idle Rich Ownership Class.)
Socialism/a co-op is Democracy extended to the workplace.[1]
In a Capitalist workplace there are lots of folks (the producers) with no say in what happens.
It couldn't be farther from Democracy.
[1] ...and the places that have called themselves "socialist" or "communist" have all been top-down Authoritarian things; the antithesis of what they are claiming to be.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]