gothamist

Gothamist, LAist & DCist are back thanks to WNYC & others!

Very good news, Gothamist is coming back! After getting the plug pulled by billionaire owner Joe Rickets back in November, a consortium of Public Radio stations — WNYC in New York, WAMU in Washington DC, and KPCC in Southern California — have acquired the rights and archives of Gothamist, as well as LAist, DCist and DNAInfo. Gothamist founders Jake Dobkin and Jen Chung led the sale which is being funded by two anonymous donors. They hope Gothamist will be back up and reporting this spring. LAist and DCist will be back too, while DNAInfo will be archive-only. More from WIRED:

“The nonprofit WNYC business model has proved to be a growing and thriving thing while a lot of things have been going so deeply south,” says Jim Schachter, head of the news division at WNYC. “The hope is we can build something bigger and better by bringing these two things together.”

The details of the integration are still being ironed out. Initially, WNYC plans to run Gothamist as a parallel site, seeded with stories by Chung, members of the WNYC staff, and eventually, a mix of new hires and former Gothamist writers interested in getting the band back together. “We’re going to be trying to rebuild the newsroom,” Chung says. Because the size of the donation is still private, it’s unclear just how large the budget for hiring is.

Gothamist, glad to have you back!

https://twitter.com/jakedobkin/status/967068296469196801