 Joe Ricketts |
Chicago billionaire Joe Ricketts ordered the immediate shutdown of local electronic news sites Gothamist and DNAinfo on Nov. 2, throwing 115 people in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco out of work.
Known for his conservative views and support for President Trump, Ricketts shuttered the publications following a vote to join the Writers Guild of America East.
In his letter to staff, Ricketts did not mention the union vote for his "difficult decision to discontinue publishing DNAinfo and Gothamist," which share a newsroom.
He launched DNAinfo in 2009 because he saw "an opportunity existed to build a successful company that would report unbiased neighborhood news and information."
At closing, the sites delivered news each day to more than a half million emails, built a base of 2M fans across social channels and attracted more than 15M monthly visitors.
Those numbers weren't enough for them to turn a profit, and Ricketts noted "businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure."
The Ameritrade founder admitted financial progress had be made, but it "wasn't sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded."
His hope is that "someone will crack the code on a business that can support exceptional neighborhood storytelling."
Trump Media & Technology Group today reported a $58.2M net loss on $4.1M in 2023 revenues, a disclosure that drove its stock price down 22.6 percent to $47.96.
Barry Pollack, an attorney at Wall Street’s Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler, has registered Julian Assange as a client with the Justice Dept. “out of an abundance of caution.”
Paramount Global to slash 800 jobs in what chief executive Bob Bakish calls part of an effort to “return the company to earnings growth"... Rolling Stone editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman is exiting at the end of the month due to disagreements with chief executive Gus Wenner over the direction the magazine is taking... The New York Times broke the $1 billion barrier in annual revenue from digital subscriptions in 2023... Press Forward is investing more than $500 million to strengthen local newsrooms.
The majority of news articles are read within the first three days of publication, according to a recent report.
The Los Angeles Times gives pink slips to 115 people or 20 percent of its newsroom staff... TIME is also laying off about 30 employees, which is approximately 15 percent of its editorial staff... The Baltimore Banner, which was launched by Stewart Bainum in 2022 after he failed to buy the Baltimore Sun, added 500 subscribers per day in the three days following Sinclair Broadcast Group's deal to purchase the Sun.
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