News websites in the Gothamist network, which were shut down abruptly last year by its billionaire owner, will reopen under new management: public radio.
KPCC, a public radio station in Pasadena, Calif., said it would run LAist, one of the Gothamist sites, after two anonymous donors acquired LAist and its sister sites in the Gothamist network.
WNYC will run the flagship Gothamist site out of New York, and WAMU in Washington will take over DCist, KPCC said.
Joe Ricketts, the billionaire chief executive of LAist's parent company DNAinfo, abruptly shut his network of local media sites in November shortly after editorial staffers at Gothamist and DNAinfo in New York unionized.
He cited costs.
"Progress hasn't been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded," Ricketts said in a statement at the time.
Journalists at the company say that wasn't the case.
"The decision to close DNAinfo and the Gothamist sites (which Ricketts had purchased in March) was political, and not merely a question of finances," former LAist editor in chief Julia Wick wrote after her site was shut down. "Although continuously turning a profit in the news business is notoriously difficult, the five 'ist' sites, as we referred to them, had managed to operate in the black."
Ricketts is selling the story archives, internet domains and social media assets of the Gothamist and DNAinfo properties as part of the deal, KPCC reported.
