Over million followers blog Shanghaiist shut down

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On Saturday, Shanghaiist’s Facebook profile photo was eternally turned to black, representing the closure of a beloved local news blog with over five million followers worldwide. Its official website was also shut down at the same time.

The original logo of Shanghaiist /Photo from Shanghaiist's Facebook

Founded by New York leading local news agency Gothamist in 2005, Shanghaiist belongs to Gothamist’s “-ist” families including LAist, DCist and SFist. As its most well-known sub-brand, Shanghaiist has published tens of thousands of Chinese stories especially Shanghai stories, relating to arts, culture, society and business, etc.

Even though it has won millions of followers’ hearts, this website was ordered to shut down by its owner, DNAinfo’s founder Joe Ricketts, who purchased Gothamist in the spring.

“I've made the difficult decision to discontinue publishing DNAinfo and Gothamist,” said Mr. Ricketts in his message published on Shanghaiist’s website, adding what both DNAinfo and Gothamist achieved “hasn't been sufficient to support the tremendous effort and expense needed.”

The shutdown announcement / Photo from Shanghaiist's website

The decision was made a week after both DNAinfo and Gothamist employees voting to join a union successfully according to The New York Times.

“The decision by the editorial team to unionize is simply another competitive obstacle making it harder for the business to be financially successful,” said a spokesman for DNAinfo in a statement.

Overall, the shutdown of both DNAinfo and Gothamist makes over one hundred employees lose their jobs, including team members from the popular social media brand, Shanghaiist.

After Shanghaiist announced its heartbroken closure, numerous fans flooded to its website and social media platforms, commenting “R.I.P. Shanghaiist”.

As one of the most welcomed news sources among expats living in China, the loss of Shanghaiist also aroused mourning from other Chinese media outlets, such as The Nanfang.

Screenshot of The Nanfang Twitter account

“We’d like to warmly welcome @shanghaiist to our sad club. It was the granddaddy of all #China blogs. Sad to see it go,” The Nanfang tweeted.