Formation of union in start-up company costs people a lot of jobs.
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Joe Ricketts (of the Chicago Cubs’ owning Ricketts family fame) caused a bit of controversy in the media world this past week when he abruptly shut the doors of DNAinfo/The Gothamist, a hyper-local online publication that had offices in major U.S. cities and its largest offices in New York and Chicago.
“While we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that 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 letter announcing his decision.
The straw that broke the camel’s back though was when a group of writers in the largest bureau, New York, made the decision to unionize, against the wishes of Ricketts. That one decision led to 116 people losing their jobs, immediately. They were all warned not to unionize, but they ignored the warning and now everything is over.
DNAinfo’s audience was nothing to sneeze at. According to a story in the Chicago Tribune, “the neighborhood news coverage in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and other markets drew more than 15 million visits per month...” Like all successful business ventures, “where the revenue/money comes from” is sort of an important concern. An existential one, even. Who pays for the entity to continue to operate? Customers? Investors? Sponsors?
In DNAinfo’s case the money came directly from John Ricketts. All of it in the beginning, as a matter of fact. If not for him, and him alone, the entity would have never existed in the first place. He went out and created over 100 jobs – that didn’t exist previously, mind you – in the media field. I’ll tell you as someone in the media field (radio broadcasting) any sort of “new” jobs are welcome, because the total number of jobs in the journalism field has been slowly but surely dwindling for decades.
Mike Koolidge lives in Rochelle and hosts the regionally syndicated radio program The Michael Koolidge Show (www.koolidge.com) heard daily on 10 radio stations statewide, including Rockford’s 1440 WROK from 9 to 11 a.m. live every weekday morning. Mike will be broadcasting live at Salt 251 in Rochelle on Wednesday, Nov. 22nd (Thanksgiving Eve). Public officials and citizens can reach the show anytime at radio@koolidge.com or 815-561-7130.