Major Trump donor and billionaire CEO Joe Ricketts announced Thursday that he’s closing the doors on two New York City local news outlets, DNAinfo and the Gothamist, amid financial hardships and a successful union vote.
Ricketts, who was CEO of DNAinfo and had bought Gothamist earlier this year, penned a letter to readers to explain his decision, noting “DNAinfo is, at the end of the day, a business, and businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure.”
Local outlets also owned by Ricketts in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., including DCist, will also close its doors along with the New York papers, leaving nearly 115 journalists without jobs, just one week after they voted to unionize.
Despite efforts to make the business more profitable, he said they haven’t “been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded.”
During the 2016 campaign, Ricketts, who also founded TD Ameritrade, donated more than $1 million to President Trump’s campaign after previously campaigning against him.
His son, who owns the Chicago Cubs, was also offered a position in the Trump administration but ultimately turned it down.
Before Ricketts pledged his support to then-candidate, Trump tweeted, “I hear the Ricketts family, who own the Chicago Cubs, are secretly spending $’s against me. They better be careful, they have a lot to hide!”
