RIP Gothamist

I just found out this afternoon that the website Gothamist.com is no more. The owner shut it (and other -sit sites like Chicagoist and LAist) down after the employees voted to unionize. Gothamist was one of my daily web reads. Even though I no longer live in New York, I kept up with the news there, mainly from reading Gothamist. It's a shame the owner shut the site down, but that's what happens sometimes when you work for a corporate overlord. You never know when the hammer is going to fall. Trust me, I know. I worked for a publisher in Philadelphia years ago that was bought by a corporate overlord and the office was shut down and most of the employees lost their jobs. (I left before the shutdown, but in hindsight I should have stayed and gotten the severance offered.) Layoffs often seem to happen around the holidays too, another kick in the gut. Happy Thanksgiving. You're laid off. Merry Christmas. Welcome to the unemployment line. And when you lose your job right before the holidays, good luck getting another one anytime soon.  A lot of employers shut down any kind of hiring until the new year. I read that the Gothamist employees (former employees) would be paid through February of 2018. I don't know if that's true but if it is, that's great. (That doesn't mean they'll have benefits like health insurance during that time, but something is better than nothing, right?) RIP, Gothamist, a great source of NY news.