Product Code Database
Gothamist is a New York City centric blog website operated by New York Public Radio. From 2003 to 2018 Gothamist LLC was the operator, or in some cases franchising, of eight city-centric websites that focused on news, events, food, culture, and other local coverage. It was founded in 2003 by Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung. In March 2017, Joe Ricketts, owner of DNAinfo, acquired the company and, in November 2017, the websites were temporarily shut down after the newsroom staff voted to Trade union. In February 2018, it was announced that New York Public Radio, KPCC and WAMU had acquired Gothamist, LAist and DCist, respectively. Chicagoist was purchased by Chicago-born rapper Chance the Rapper in July 2018.
Canadian blog Torontoist was launched by the American company, but was transferred to the locally-owned Ink Truck Media in April 2009, while retaining its "-ist" name and remaining affiliated with the Gothamist network. In March 2011, Torontoist was acquired from Ink Truck Media by St. Joseph Media, magazine publishing division of Canadian media giant St. Joseph Communications. As a result the site was not affected by the Gothamist shutdown in 2017, and remained in operation until it was acquired by Daily Hive in 2019.
In a similar fashion, in 2010 Londonist was transferred to the London-based startup LDN Creative.
An estimate by income.com in 2015 quoted the monthly revenue from Gothamist at $110,000.
On November 2, 2017, Ricketts posted to both DNAinfo and the "-ist" network sites that both websites would immediately cease operations, a week after Gothamist writers voted to unionize with the Writers Guild of America, East. All content from all DNAinfo sites and all subsidiary sites were taken down. The next day, archives of the sites were returned to functionality. Ricketts's shutdown was criticized as being a mere act of retaliation after the two companies' workers had joined a union. In the aftermath of the shutdown, laid-off reporters for Gothamist stated that former owners Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung actively cooperated with Ricketts to discourage the union efforts, "It was textbook union-busting stuff."
On January 7, 2019, labor union SAG-AFTRA and WNYC announced that they had reached an agreement to recognize more than 25 digital employees of New York Public Radio, including Gothamist staff.
Impress3 Media bought the San Francisco blog site, SFist, in January 2019 and relaunched it the following month with the former editor-in-chief as a consultant.
|
|
