Billionaire Joe Ricketts, who owns a newspaper company
specializing in local news, shut down his papers (DNAInfo, Gothamist) abruptly
a few days after his 100+ employees had
voted to unionize.
Andy Leland and John Leland have a detailed account in
the New York Times here. The Times article embeds a copy of what
visitors see when trying to visit one of the sites. Callum Borcher of the Washington Post weighs
in here.
Ricketts maintains that his venture had to pay its own
way and be profitable. This is unlike the
case with me (I have some means but orders of magnitude less than him), or even
companies like The Washington Times, a conservative newspaper said to be
published for its speech value and not money.
But it’s interesting also that the paper had
specialized in local news. I can recall
a gay paper that tried to start in Minneapolis shortly after my own layoff from
my career that insisted it would remain local. I don’t recall how it did.
Joe Ricketts has an interesting perspective on his
refusal to let his own businesses unionize.
I guess he has the right to shut them down, it they’re really his.
No comments:
Post a Comment