Lesson plan
DCist
DCist was a local news website that focused on the District of Columbia. The site began as a volunteer-run blog focused on Washington, D.C., in the same family of "-ist" websites as Gothamist, LAist, 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 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 joined KPCC (FM) in 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 and announced a multiyear plan to reshape its news division and provide more in-depth coverage of the Washington metropolitan area. 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.…
Article summary
DCist was a local news website that focused on the District of Columbia. The site began as a volunteer-run blog focused on Washington, D.C., in the same family of "-ist" websites as Gothamist, LAist, 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 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 joined KPCC (FM) in 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 and announced a multiyear plan to reshape its news division and provide more in-depth coverage of the Washington metropolitan area. 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.…
Key claims
No claims recorded.
Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
No sources recorded.
Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.