Anti-union Billionaire Shutters DNAinfo and Gothamist

Joe Ricketts is a billionaire, a part owner of the Chicago Cubs, and a long-time supporter of Donald Trump. Until last Thursday, he was also CEO of DNAinfo and Gothamist, two vibrant sources of online news about New York real estate and city life. The New York Times reports that one week after reporters in the two sites’ combined newsroom voted to unionize, Ricketts, an outspoken opponent of labor unions, abruptly shut down the websites, a stunning move that puts 115 out of jobs – both at the New York operations that unionized and at those in Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington that did not. 

DNAinfo, which Ricketts founded in 2009, never turned a profit. In a statement to readers of DNAinfo and Gothamist, whose news staffs were combined in a cost-cutting move, Ricketts made no mention of the staff’s recent vote to join the Writers Guild of America. His statement reads, in part: “DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure. 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.” 

Ricketts’ anti-union sentiments were made clear in a blog post last year called “Why I’m Against Unions At Businesses I Create.” In it he argued that “unions promote a corrosive us-against-them dynamic that destroys the esprit de corps businesses need to succeed.” 

Here’s now DNAinfo reporter Katie Honan explained the online staff’s motivation for joining the union: “If this is the future of journalism, it should be a career for people, not a post-college hobby.” 

For 115 people it’s no longer even a hobby. It’s their ticket to the world of the unemployed.