American news websites Mass media in Washington, D.C. DCist began as a volunteer-run

blog A blog (a Clipping (morphology), truncation of "weblog") is an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries also known as posts. Posts are typically displayed in Reverse chronology, reverse chronologic ...

focused on

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, in the same family of "-ist" websites as

Gothamist ''Gothamist'' is a New York City–centric blog operated by New York Public Radio. From 2003 to 2018, Gothamist LLC was the operator, or in some cases franchisor, of eight city-centric websites that focused on news, events, food, culture, an ...

LAist KPCC ( FM 89.3) – branded LAist 89.3 – is a non-commercial educational radio station licensed in Pasadena, California. KPCC itself is primarily serving Greater Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley; through rebroadcating and translat ...

, and Chicagoist. A professional editor began steering the publication in 2007 as it became a go-to news source. The staff grew to three people by the time billionaire

Joe Ricketts John Joseph Ricketts (born July 16, 1941) is an American businessman. He is the founder, former CEO and former chairman of TD Ameritrade. He has an estimated net worth of US$4.1 billion as of 2024, according to ''Forbes''. He has pursued a variety ...

purchased the company in early 2017. Several months later, Ricketts shut all of the websites down after newsroom staff in New York voted to unionize. D.C. public radio station

WAMU WAMU (88.5 FM) is a public news– talk station that services the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area. It is owned by American University, and its studios are located near the campus in northwest Washington. WAMU has been the primary Nati ...

joined KPCC (FM) in and

WNYC WNYC is an audio service brand, under the control of New York Public Radio, a non-profit organization. Radio and other audio programming is primarily provided by a pair of nonprofit, noncommercial, public radio stations: WNYC (AM) and WNYC- ...

to purchase several of the respective sites from Ricketts in a bid to expand the radio stations' digital audiences. DCist relaunched in 2018. After operating as separate teams for two years, WAMU's local newsroom and DCist began collaborating as a single team during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

and announced a multiyear plan to reshape its news division and provide more in-depth coverage of the

Washington metropolitan area The Washington metropolitan area, also referred to as the National Capital Region, Greater Washington, or locally as the DMV (short for Washington, D.C., District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia), is the metropolitan area comprising Washing ...

. However, within three years the public radio station divested from local news by eliminating 16 positions. Following the layoffs, several former DCist workers created a new digital news outlet, The 51st. The day that DCist stopped publishing, WAMU implemented a pop-up message that redirected visitors away from the DCist website, effectively preventing access to its 20-year archive. After significant public pressure, WAMU removed the redirect and allowed access to the DCist archives, promising they would remain available for at least one year. After one year, DCist.com was still hosted by WAMU and no plan had been announced for its permanent archive. But Washington City Paper media columnist Vince Morris posted on social media that District of Columbia Public Library is in the process of acquiring rights to the site from

American University The American University (AU or American) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Its main campus spans 90-acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, in the Spri ...

. In the meantime, the library has created a page for the site archives to help readers access

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by Internet Archive, an American nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California. Launched for public access in 2001, the service allows users to go "back in ...

copies of articles of every DCist article.

References

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