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posted by martyb on Monday November 06 2017, @11:54PM   Printer-friendly
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established organizations such as The Village Voice, The Wall Street Journal and The Daily News have slashed staff or withdrawn from street-level reporting.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.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Tuesday November 07 2017, @12:36PM (4 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Tuesday November 07 2017, @12:36PM (#593615) Homepage Journal

    You know, I do absolutely agree with your description. And - from my experience in the US - unions there have truly become parasites: looking out for their own good, at the expense of the very employees that they are supposed to represent.

    It wasn't always that way. Once upon a time, unions provided a counterbalance to exploitative employers. You can fire one employee, but you can't fire 1000 of them without endangering your company (and few companies are willing to just close their doors). Today, labor laws provide much of the protection that old-time unions fought to get.

    However, pure capitalism will find a way. Short-term thinking, management by spreadsheet: cut costs at any cost. I'm now out of touch with the US labor market, but I am still indirectly involved in the UK. It seems to me that the UK is developing a new two-class society: people with permanent jobs, and temps. More and more companies are turning large parts of their workforce into temps. You are hired for a day, a week, or even a month or a year. But you have zero job security, no guarantee of how many hours you will work, no retirement benefits, nothing but your hourly wage that could disappear at any moment. I've know people who worked as a "temp" for the same company, for several years.

    Now, it's easy to say "just leave", but if *all* companies in your field hire only temps? That's just a totally shitty way to live. And it *is* exploitative: What was intended as a stopgap to allow companies to hire personnel for crunches (like the Christmas rush) has been expanded into a general loophole: a way to avoid paying benefits or offering job security to large parts of their workforces. If this continues, I imagine that we will see union rise again, as a way for millions of "temps" to demand benefits for the jobs they are, in fact, doing.

    History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

    --
    Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @03:27PM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 07 2017, @03:27PM (#593670) Journal

    Now, it's easy to say "just leave", but if *all* companies in your field hire only temps?

    Just leave. It's not as easy to do as to say, but it's far from impossible.

    However, pure capitalism will find a way. Short-term thinking, management by spreadsheet: cut costs at any cost.

    Pure capitalism also has rewards for people who don't do that. One should consider what's going on that such behavior is viable in the long run. The answer is risk mitigation by government such as "too big to fail", public pensions, etc. When you have someone else eliminating future risk, you don't need to think about it any more.

    • (Score: 2, Touché) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday November 07 2017, @03:54PM (2 children)

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Tuesday November 07 2017, @03:54PM (#593684) Journal

      Just leave. It's not as easy to do as to say, but it's far from impossible.

      How's the view from your ivory tower?

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:06PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 07 2017, @04:06PM (#593691) Journal

        How's the view from your ivory tower?

        Why are you trying to imply that job hopping is not a real world thing?

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 07 2017, @09:21PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 07 2017, @09:21PM (#593819)

        You could go to, I dunno, some civilized country like Switzerland, where they have unions and public health care?