The Shanghaiist Bytes the Dust

[Randy W]

(Pun intended). While I often found the Shanghaiist less useful as a direct source of information, it has been a good source of information gathered from other sources.

 

This is from the China Law Blog

 

https://www.facebook.com/ChinaLawBlog/posts/10154841482126109

 

So sorry to see that Shanghaiist has closed down/been closed down. It was one of the few remaining really good sources for news on China. Would love to hear your thoughts below.

November 2, 2017

Today, I've made the difficult decision to discontinue publishing DNAinfo and Gothamist. Reaching this decision wasn't easy, and it wasn't one I made lightly.

ASSETS.DNAINFO.COM

 

[dan_ling]

It seems the owner was a bit upset with the vote to uniionize.

 

On Thursday, they lost their jobs, as Joe Ricketts, the billionaire founder of TD Ameritrade who owned the sites, shut them down.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/nyregion/dnainfo-gothamist-shutting-down.html

 

Sorry the link does not work for some reason.

Edited November 5, 2017 by dan_ling (see edit history)

[Greg.D.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/03/opinion/dnainfo-gothamist-ricketts-union.html

[dnoblett]

More on it, looks like Torontoist will remain running...

 

https://torontoist.com/2017/11/gothamist-dead-torontoist-lives/

[Allon]

I cannot read or see the China Law blog post. I think my setup is not compatible with the image there. But I get the gist.

 

Recently, Robert Mercer sold his interest in Breitbart News. I do not want to be accused of posting something political. This only relates to how billionaires (oligarchs), right wing or left wing, are taking over not only this country, but already have others. Mercer is the guy who funded Breitbart for many years when Breitbart himself died suddenly and eventually Steve Bannon took over. Bannon and Mercer are friends going back to their days as brokers on Wall Street. (Mercer actually believes there are beneficial aspects to nuclear war*. here)

 

But really this is nothing really new. Billionaires (or millionaires in earlier times) owned newspapers and held sway over their content. Henry Luce, Time Magazine, William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer, many newspapers and magazines. The latter two were exemplified in the term "yellow journalism" and in fact ignited the Spanish American War. (here) It is argued that we would see a whole different face on China if Luce had left China alone and not taken sides with the Generalissimo. He threatened to start another Spanish-American war if JFK did not invade Cuba. (here)

 

They did do many good things otherwise. But I don't think they went to the extreme of shutting down a newspaper syndicate, basically, because of a writer's union. (Being a member of the union at one time, and probably will join again, I must declare my view wholly objective. )

 

What disturbs me is interference of these oligarchs in the process of promulgating the news. Putin and his bunch shut down news organization after news organization, paper and broadcast alike.

 

I remember some posts by Randy from the Shangailist and like most of Randy's posts, I found them very thought provoking. What is so wrong with inquiry? Information? Even if the "list" series was supposed to be local news? What is so wrong with unions?

 

The only answer to one newspaper being one sided is to have many newspapers.

 

 

*Another onetime senior employee at Renaissance recalls hearing Mercer downplay the dangers posed by nuclear war. Mercer, speaking of the atomic bombs that the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, argued that, outside of the immediate blast zones, the radiation actually made Japanese citizens healthier. The National Academy of Sciences has found no evidence to support this notion.

 

[dnoblett]

Not exactly... they are alive and kicking, not involved in the stateside blowup...

From their WeChat account.

On the morning of November 3rd, we woke up to a rude shock when it appeared that a switch was flicked and our website was taken down, along with more than 35,000 stories we have written over 12 years.
We apologize for our silence over the past week as we mourned the sudden demise of the Gothamist network and tried to make sense of what was happening.

A number of media reports (and obituaries) have since been written, and we wanted to take this opportunity to clarify a few things:

Shanghaiist operates as an independent entity that will not be affected by the shutdown of the network’s sites for the following cities in the United States: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington D.C.

Shanghaiist was not in any way involved in the union vote that ostensibly led the owner of DNAinfo to shut down the network. Since the founding of our site in 2005, the Shanghaiist crew has retained independent control of our own editorial and advertising operations, as well as our own staffing. We received invaluable support from Gothamist over the years in web design and hosting, but on a day-to-day basis had little contact with any of our sister sites. The same was true for other websites within the network that were serving cities outside of the United States. Each site sank or swam on its own.

MORE...

http://shanghaiist.com/2017/11/14/statement.php

 

WeChat: shanghai_ist

 

https://www.facebook.com/shanghaiist/

http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/TOUHKDlbT6cmrRpe6ukKSQ

 

 

https://www.facebook.com/shanghaiist/photos/a.450324966029.251846.5852261029/10155177080461030/

[Randy W]

They're VERY good for this kind of thing

 

Stubborn apartment block owner makes Harbin urban planners switch to plan B

 

http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/alexlinder/nail_apartment_block.jpg