Yesterday, Joe Ricketts pulled the plug on DNAinfo/Gothamist and, in doing so, also killed DNAInfo Chicago and the Chicagoist, putting a lot of people out of work and stopping cold a source of neighborhood news that had become very important to a lot of people.
While this endeavor had yet to show any sort of profit, it was only when the editorial staff voted to unionize that owner Joe Ricketts, part of the family that currently owns the Chicago Cubs and is methodically turning once-funky Wrigleyville into one huge Dave & Buster's for the rich and entitled, decided to pull the plug.
In a letter posted to the site yesterday, Ricketts wrote that "while we made important progress toward building DNAinfo into a successful business, in the end, that progress hasn't been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed to produce the type of journalism on which the company was founded," to which this writer responds "BULLSHIT".
What this person, who was born on third base and seems convinced that he was still robbed of a home run, did was take his ball and go home because, quite simply, he didn't get his way.
Keep in mind that this is the same fellow who founded TD Ameritrade, a company that builds nothing but wealth and, while it claims to give a shit about the little guy, is actually beholden to its largest shareholder, Toronto-Dominion Bank, which, itself is worth almost a TRILLION dollars.
Imagine running a company that had one client so huge that you put their fucking initials in your name.
And continue to imagine that if said client is so rich, so powerful, the power they might wield over a billionaire would be such that, rather than appear weak, said billionaire might choose to kill the one thing of actual intrinsic value that he'd managed to build out of nothing instead of his usual M.O. of buying an established entity from someone else after they'd already done all the work.
You know, like the Chicago Cubs.
Sometimes success is about more than money. My entire music career, for example, has been a success because it brought me experiences and friends that I would not have otherwise encountered, but you sure as hell wouldn't know it from my bank account balance, yet, as tempted as I have been to take my own ball and go home at times when things get tough, I have always found a way to keep on keeping on.
So what if I lose money? It is, after all, only money.
When I die, though, what I will have left behind isn't some ridiculously bloated stock portfolio that my billionaire family bestowed upon me that I either squandered or built upon, but, instead, something that did not exist until I dreamed it to life.
Trust me, sometimes I look at the boxes of yet-to-be-sold CD's and outdated tour merch that take up space in the garage and add further expense to any future relocation and wonder if I wouldn't have been better off worshiping the almighty dollar, but then I see someone send me a check for $50 just to own a copy of an album I released almost 30 years ago and I realize that what I built still has value. Not because they sent me fifty bucks, which is nice, but because owning something that I made from nothing means more to them than keeping that fifty bucks.
That something I built can reach someone in Japan, or Great Britain is pretty amazing. That I can show up in L.A. or Denver or Austin to play a show and see a roomful of people I do not know take time out from their daily life to come hear me play music is pretty fucking amazing, when you think about it.
Sure, some nights, it might only be 40 people and, yeah, I kinda wish it was 4000, but if I want to get to that point, I know I have to work that much harder.
I sure as hell won't get there by taking my ball and going home.
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quitters never win