Gothamist & DNAInfo back online; Jen & Jake post 'Thank You' letter
After initial silence following the sudden shut down on Thursday (11/2) of Gothamist and DNAInfo, former Gothamist owners Jen Chung and Jake Dobkin have broken their silence in the form of a co-signed “Thank You” letter posted to social media. It thanks many people responsible for Gothamist’s success including… Joe Ricketts, the man who bought it from them and shut it down completely months later…
Thank you for all your well wishes. Your enthusiastic support has been crucial to us over the years, and inspired our commitment to local journalism in NYC, Chicago, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco—and Shanghai, London, Toronto and other cities.
We started blogging in 2002 and officially launched Gothamist in early 2003, turning our love for NYC into an independent business that allowed us to connect with readers on topics like cyclist and pedestrian safety; mass transit; bodega cats; mysterious maple syrup smells; and much more.
We feel very fortunate that we got to know the DNAinfo team. Their commitment to neighborhood news and breaking big stories kept us on our toes before the acquisition— and for the eight months we worked together as a group. We also owe Joe Ricketts and the management team many thanks for giving us this opportunity and their strong support of journalism.
All of our great reporters, contributors and partners are too numerous to list, but we’d like to single out Jen Carlson, John Del Signore, Neil Epstein and Mei Lee for their passion for Gothamist and service of many years. We couldn’t have done it without you guys.
Thank you for letting us contribute to our wonderful cities.
We had a hell of a run.
Jen & Jake
Meanwhile, many on Twitter very quickly and very angrily assumed yesterday that Ricketts had pulled down the archives of Gothamist and DNAInfo for good (ignoring that the NY Times immeditely reported that somebody at DNAInfo said the site would be archived in some way). We may never know if that was actually his intention, but but less than 24 hours later, the archives of Gothamist and DNAInfo are back online for now, and Jake says they’re looking for a permanent home:
https://twitter.com/jakedobkin/status/926512759117934594
https://twitter.com/jakedobkin/status/926513315253284869
The “shut down” letter is now a link on the top of all pages instead of a redirect from all pages.
