A pro-Trump billionaire has dismantled several of the last remaining outposts of local reporting in New York City, canned more than 100 journalists who tried to advocate for fair wages and conditions.

Hacks and the general public wondered why Joe Rickets bought Gothamist and DNAinfo a few months ago. The magazines had been critical of Rickets and articles that referred to him disappeared overnight.

But the site seemed to be continuing until hacks thought it might be a good idea to form a union. This appeared to be the last straw for Rickets who shut the magazine down without warning.

Rickets did not even try to sell the magazines; he just wrote off his entire investment.

What was alarming about the move was that it was local news that was hit. It will mean fewer media coverage of local corruption and street-level news.

Newsweek said DNAinfo had been reporting on undercover neighbourhoods in New York and Chicago for eight years. Its journalists reported on crooked landlords, police brutality, City Council races, community members and all manner of local dysfunction. Gothamist, which mixed original reporting with fun, the irreverent blogging and aggregation, served as a digital heart of the city for more than a decade.

Newsweek pointed out that the only people who benefit from DNAinfo being shuttered were billionaires and dodgy landlords who DNAinfo reported critically on over the years.

But the case is alarming. It has been a little more than a year since a lawsuit secretly funded by billionaire Peter Thiel resulted in the shuttering of Gawker.com. Small online magazines can easily be shuttered by those with lots of cash.