Last year the websites Gothamist, LAist, and DCist unionized, and, almost immediately, their owner Joe Ricketts decided to shut them down. Now the news websites are getting a second life, as the public radio stations WNYC (New York), KPCC (Southern California), and WAMU (Washington, D.C.) announced Feb. 23 that they are have joined together to buy the sites and their archives, internet domains, and social media assets. Two anonymous donors contributed an undisclosed sum to acquire the sites. "The nonprofit WNYC business model has proved to be a growing and thriving thing while a lot of things have been going so deeply south," says Jim Schachter, head of the news division at WNYC, said in Wired. "The hope is we can build something bigger and better by bringing these two things together." Gothamist's founders are talking to other radio stations and news organizations about buying the Chicago and San Francisco websites that Ricketts also closed.