DNA and Gothamist readers welcome

I can't say it is with much shock that I learned today that the head of Gothamist and DNA.info has taken the sites offline in light of the workers' decision to unionize. Why would you keep alive sites mostly based on comments, when those comments are likely to be against you? That said, I welcome their readers and most of their commenters for the short term and perhaps the long term. http://observer.com/2017/11/dnainfo-and-gothamist-shut-down-site-archives-taken-offline/

owner's sign off message: https://assets.dnainfo.com/message.html BTW, We were on our fourth DNA.Info reporter, and I figured Brooklynian.com would outlast the present reported (Rachel), but I didn't think I would outlast the site itself.

Huge loss. I don't even know where to begin to fill the hole that Gothamist is leaving us with. And I am thankful for the Brooklynian. May it live forever.

Wonder where everyone will go to comment. Jezebel, jalopnik? Gawker would have been the natural flow but, well you know

Brokelyn, perhaps will morph to fill the new gap. They would often reference articles from DNAinfo and Gothamist. They also recently changed hands so who knows.

And here's a possibly dumb question. In instances like this, what is stopping the core writers of Gothamist from getting together in someones living room, and starting from scratch. I mean that blog WAS the writers (and commenters), those people still exist, and one would imagine once the new gothamist is on its feet, the ad dollars would start to return.

http://gothamistinexile.com/

goldemi1 said:

Wonder where everyone will go to comment. Jezebel, jalopnik? Gawker would have been the natural flow but, well you know

Someone has created gothamissed.com. Many of the regulars are there. Yay!

Sad to see the sites go, especially DNA Info, but the writers knew they were taking a risk when they voted to unionize (they didn't think the owner would call their bluff). I fully support the owner's right to do what he did, by the way.

There is very little advertising revenue available to news and quasi-news websites, and almost no subscriber revenue. So, journalism has become sort of a hobby that one does in a addition to a full time job. ...it also does not help when your sites have content that is available in many other outlets, and no readily discernible return to advertisers in terms of sales. As the owner states, at the end of the day it is a business.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/gothamist-dnainfo-dead-local-media-survive-article-1.3608934

Unsurprisingly, Mayor DeBlasio is against the decision:

https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/926465163116666880

And, BKLYNER agrees that the local news business is really hard and not very lucrative: https://bklyner.com/want-local-news-become-paying-subscriber/

This one is wordy, but still an ok read: https://www.cjr.org/local_news/local-news-new-york-city.php

Given how not lucrative the local news business is, I can't say I understand the optimism of the sites mentioned in this article: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/nyregion/news-sites-with-local-ambitions-hope-to-fill-digital-void.html

whynot_31 said:

There is very little advertising revenue available to news and quasi-news websites, and almost no subscriber revenue. So, journalism has become sort of a hobby that one does in a addition to a full time job. ...it also does not help when your sites have content that is available in many other outlets, and no readily discernible return to advertisers in terms of sales. As the owner states, at the end of the day it is a business.

It may be a business, but DNA Info was already losing money when Ricketts has acquired Gothamist.

Source:"http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-dnainfo-shutting-down-20171102-story.html"

Citing that unionization wouldn't make the business profitable was a convenient excuse. I'm not convinced that this was an attempt to bust the union.

whynot_31 said:

Unsurprisingly, Mayor DeBlasio is against the decision:

https://twitter.com/NYCMayor/status/926465163116666880

And, BKLYNER agrees that the local news business is really hard and not very lucrative: https://bklyner.com/want-local-news-become-paying-subscriber/

Way to go, Progressive Bill!

According to what I heard on CBS radio this morning, Patch may pick up where these two left off and it's a profitable enterprise. The only thing is that many of their articles were picked up from other news sources and didn't seem to be written by their own staff. In addition, I read a blog called "the Consumerist" for years which was part of Gawker and then became part of Consumer Reports and that shut down suddenly on Thursday as well so maybe they were part of that union vote too.

Websites that simply publish stories from other websites seem to have no future. ...there doesn't seem to be enough value added to attract advertisers or subscribers. A lot of it seems to be tied to civic engagement, and in a city wherein only 24% of the populace votes in a general election, it is certainly understandable that many aren't real interested in local news either.

https://medium.com/the-seven-arts/news-will-be-fine-unless-its-local-9edde6ef949e

Gothamist will return in a different form. DNA.info will remain gone. http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20180223/ENTERTAINMENT/180229941

https://twitter.com/jakedobkin/status/967068296469196801

https://twitter.com/Gothamist/status/967063828658835456

Gothamist may not have the Union that it formed just before it was shut down.

And some of the regular writers have not been invited back yet.