The local news web site LAist abruptly shut down yesterday afternoon, along with its New York City sister site Gothamist.
When visitors log on to the site, there's now a letter from CEO Joe Ricketts saying it was a difficult decision to shut the company down, but "at the end of the day...businesses need to be economically successful if they are to endure."
The New York office voted to unionize last week, and it's unclear whether that decision had any impact on the sites shutting down.
But to many of its fans, the information LAist provided was priceless.
"It was a curator and creator of local news and local content," says KPCC digital producer Lisa Brenner, who wrote for LAist at one point in her career. "It felt like a community. It spoke to the community."