Gothamist Kickstarter Campaign Seeks $100K For Relaunch

NEW YORK, NY — WNYC came to Gothamist's rescue in February, pledging to relaunch the well-loved New York City news site after its abrupt shutdown last fall. But the site's leaders say they need $100,000 from the public to fund its rebirth.

Gothamist launched a Kickstarter campaign Tuesday to raise at least that much money by May 4 to support its comeback under the auspices of WNYC, the nonprofit public-radio station that helped acquire Gothamist and two of its sister sites from Joe Ricketts, their billionaire former owner.

"WNYC has kept the spark of Gothamist alive. Now we need your help to fan the flames," Jen Chung, the site's co-founder, said in a video posted on Kickstarter.

The Kickstarter page says the money will "help revive the website and bring back our popular newsletter" and preserve the archives of Gothamist and DNAinfo, the hyperlocal news outlet that Ricketts also shuttered in November and is not being revived.

Raising an additional $100,000 will help Gothamist "deepen (its) service" by providing more "'Best Of' features," photography and reporting, the page says.

The campaign page does not list specific expenses that the crowdsourced money will cover, and WNYC spokesman David Cotrone maintained that it will help fund Gothamist's revival generally.

But he said the relaunch, which could happen as early as this month, will move forward regardless of the Kickstarter campaign's success.

"Our priority is building out the site and bringing you the Gothamist you love," Chung says in the video.

The campaign was more than a quarter of the way to its initial goal by midday Tuesday — 480 people had pledged more than $30,000 as of 12:47 p.m.

The fundraiser offers rewards for donating that range from a "sincere 'thank you'" for $12 to game of bowling with Chung and Jake Dobkin, Gothamist's other co-founder, for $10,000.

WNYC and two other public radio stations acquired Gothamist and its sister sites, DCist and LAist, in February, breathing new life into digital publications that had developed a reputation for local reporting and blogging before their sudden death last year.

Josh Reznick, the CEO of the advertising and marketing firm Datalot, and another still-anonymous donor funded WNYC's acquisition of Gothamist and DNAinfo's assets for an undisclosed price. Gothamist is a piece of "the digitial transformation of the WNYC newsroom," Cotrone said, separately funded by the Jerome L. Green Foundation and Cynthia Vance King, a trustee of New York Public Radio, WNYC's parent organization.

Ricketts shut down Gothamist and DNAinfo, which provided in-depth, on-the-ground coverage in New York and Chicago, without warning in early November, a week after staffers in New York voted overwhelmingly to unionize.

The move was viewed as retaliation by Ricketts for the union drive, which he, Chung and Dobkin had opposed. Former Gothamist and DNAinfo staffers have said they had no role in the deal with WNYC.

WNYC has not said how many staffers will be involved with the new Gothamist, but Editor-in-Chief John Del Signore, Editorial Director Jen Carlson and editor Chris Robbins have been brought on board.

A transition team comprising Gothamist and WNYC staffers will develop a "sustainable plan for the integration of our newsrooms," New York Public Radio CEO Laura Walker wrote last month.

"Their top priority will be to make sure this plan contributes to our broader organizational mission and goals, both internal and external: to create content that informs and inspires, to shine a light on the broad and diverse issues affecting our neighborhoods, to attract and support the best and brightest journalists in the world, and to serve as a beacon for media organizations everywhere," Walker wrote.

(Lead image: Shutterstock)