They were good news sources – he is just an anti-union a-hole – has nothing to do with any business model other than not wanting to honor labor law and his employees. The billionaire owner of DNAinfo, Gothamist and its affiliates, including DCist, abruptly shut down the network of local news sites at 5 p.m. Thursday, citing a business model he said could not support the product.

All traffic to DCist, Gothamist and its sister sites in Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere redirected Thursday afternoon to a statement from Joe Ricketts, the founder of TD AmeriTrade and DNAinfo, who had acquired Gothamist only a handful of months ago. The sites’ collective archives…