Why Gothamist Should Stay Dead

Gothamist was a business model based on taking advantage of writers, we should move past it, not resurrect it

Last autumn, Gothamist and its sibling sites like LAist and Chicagoist were shut down by their owner, Joe Ricketts after the writers unionized. It was personal for me, because a lot of my writing is on that site. For over a year I was the Chicagoist Food & Drink Editor. At the time I was an outsider in the world of professional writing. And so I had no idea that when I took the “job” it was a mistake.

To say that the Ist publications took advantage of people was an understatement. At the time the journalism world was struggling, these sites made their bucks from underpaying or simply not paying naive or desparate writers. I was firmly in the former category. I was by profession a software developer, and this was my “side hustle.”

I had very little guidance and made a lot of mistakes. But here’s the deal. I was paid $500 a month for publishing 1–3 articles A DAY on weekdays. Some of these articles I wrote, some other writers did. We paid maybe 10% of the writers in my department. Otherwise I would try to reimburse them on expenses (the budget for that was $200 a month). You can dismiss us as foolish, but a lot of people still wanted to write for the site. It was a business model based on taking advantage of people, I just had to…