As
a reporter-type person who has experienced unemployment on several occasions, I
sympathize with the DNAInfo.com website in Chicago and the individuals who earlier
this week abruptly learned they were out of work.
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| RICKETTS: Owned Cubs/media pair less than Tribune Co. |
Although
there’s nothing at all surprising about the fact that the company operating
websites in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington – along with
Chicago – decided to suddenly ‘pack it in’ after eight years of trying to cover
news in those cities.
JOE
RICKETTS, THE head of the wealthy family that owns the no-longer-defending
World Champion Chicago Cubs and also was a significant financial backer of
Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential bid (the family nearly got a member
appointed to a Cabinet post), let it be known he was giving up because the business
end was failing.
The
company wasn’t generating enough revenue to cover the expenses of actually
having people on the payroll to cover the news – which is an essential expense
if one is going to cover the news properly.
Various
reports have pointed out the fact that the employees connected to the websites
in New York voted last week to organize themselves as a labor union. Some would
have us believe that Ricketts’ decision to shut down was purely a response to
not wanting to deal with organized labor.
Which
may be true. But the idea that management would rather not have their employees
sticking together to negotiate benefits for all is nothing new. The idea of an
owner hating organized labor shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody!
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| Two local websites that are now ... |
SO
I’M NOT about to join the parade of Ricketts bashers, some of whom are even
insisting that we boycott Chicago Cubs games in response to his anti-labor
actions. I would never expect him to be sympathetic, and I personally certainly
don’t need this as a reason to ignore the Cubs – a ballclub I have never much
cared for.
What
I take personally from the DNAInfo.com closings is evidence of how costly it
can be to professionally report the news. And how those people who are eager to
see newspapers and their centuries of experience in doing so (the Chicago
Sun-Times is a baby, tracing its origins back to the days just before Pearl
Harbor) wither away are truly ridiculous in their attitudes.
There
are those people deluded enough to believe there is no loss to society from fewer
newspapers because the Internet and websites are capable of replacing them.
 |
| ... a part of Chicago's media history |
Yet
most websites I have seen that are news-oriented are way too reliant on having
newspapers to generate stories and content in general that they can appropriate
for their own use.
A
SITE LIKE DNAInfo.com, which actually had reporters looking for stories in the
neighborhoods of Chicago (some neighborhoods were covered more thoroughly than
others) that was generating its own content is running into the same problems
as those who historically were disseminating their content on printed pages of
pulp.
Which
means most of these sites wind up becoming the medium of choice for benefactors
with the finances to not care about their financial bottom line.
Even
then, there comes a point when many of them have to cut off the funding and
shut down. Remember the ProgressIllinois.com website, which had reporter-type
people out-and-about covering stories – with the bills being paid by the
Service Employees International Union?
Even
they had to give in – with the website remaining in place, but un-updated since
that final date. AP: Donald Trump Wins
Presidential Election (UPDATED) is the final headline, as though determined
to perpetually remind us all of the annoyance our society brought upon itself
just over a year ago.
 |
| Sun-Times still reporting news, despite death predictions. |
THERE
IS ONE significant difference between the two closings – DNAInfo.com and its
sister websites suddenly found all their content erased from the Internet. A
letter from Ricketts explaining his decision to suddenly shut down (and make
the four months of vacation pay and severance his reporters will receive seem
overly generous) is all that remains of the sites.
There
is some speculation Ricketts may try to archive some of the content – for those
who care to see what once was of this particular attempt at covering the news.
Although
as anyone who follows the “news” is fully aware, yesterday’s stories are ancient
history. It’s the ongoing developments that provide for an overall report that
has relevance to people’s lives.
And
without it, we as a society may have to get used to a condition in which our
attempts at public “education” may wind up being fulfilled with cutesy pictures
of kitty cats, quirky pictures of people doing something stupid, and all the
porn, porn, porn we could ever desire.
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