Conservative Joe Ricketts, Cubs family patriarch who closed DNAinfo after union vote, to launch Omaha-based ‘unbiased’ news site

The patriarch of the family that owns the Chicago Cubs is getting back in the newsgathering business.

The Omaha World-Herald reported on Sunday that billionaire businessman and philanthropist Joe Ricketts is hiring staff to launch an online national news source called Straight Arrow News.

“I think there’s a gap in the market — there’s no source for unbiased, fact-based news,” Ricketts told the World-Herald in an emailed response to questions last week. “And I believe there’s a business opportunity there.”

It isn’t the politically conservative Ricketts’ first journalistic endeavor.

He launched DNAinfo, a news website that provided local coverage in Chicago and New York, in 2009. He later bought Gothamist, another New York-based news site, and then merged the two.

But by November 2017, amid staff unionization efforts, the Tribune reported, Ricketts shut down DNAinfo and the Gothamist sites, saying the ad-supported business model was not viable. The staff’s decision to unionize made it harder for the business to be financially successful, a DNAinfo spokesperson said at the time.

Ricketts, of Wyoming, is basing his new endeavor in Omaha.

According to the World-Herald, the news company was incorporated in Delaware in July. An October filing in New York state lists the address as 9140 W. Dodge Road, the Omaha newspaper reported. The report said it is the same address of Hugo Enterprises, the holding company of for-profit and nonprofit endeavors of Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade.

In emailed responses last week to the World-Herald, Ricketts said Straight Arrow News will not involve other members of his family.

“I’ve built my career on the idea that a good business is one that serves an unmet customer need,” he told the Omaha newspaper. “The market (now) is only giving them polarized, opinionated coverage.”