The media world was rocked Thursday when DNAinfo and Gothamist announced they would be shutting down.
The announcement, made in the form of a letter written by CEO Joe Ricketts, cited profitability concerns as the primary reason for the closure, but sounded optimistic tones about what the company had tried to do.
“More important than large numbers of visitors and fans, we’ve reported tens of thousands of stories that have informed, impacted, and inspired millions of people,” Ricketts said in the letter. “And in the process, I believe we’ve left the world a better place.”
The Ricketts family owns countless properties, including the Chicago Cubs; Joe Ricketts was a founder of TD Ameritrade.
DNAinfo was founded in 2009, and was designed to cater to news consumers seeking local coverage of issues in their communities.
According to the New York Times, the closure comes just one week after employees of the New York site had voted to unionize.
After the announcement, the DNAinfo website and archives were removed, but some websites have retained an archive of some of the material available there.
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The Times said 115 journalists will lose their jobs in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington as a result of the closure, with reporters getting three months of “administrative leave” and four weeks of severance pay.
