After the sudden closure of local news sites DNAinfo and Gothamist this week, the state of neighborhood news has been thrown into stark relief.

In a statement, owner Joe Ricketts announced that he was shutting down the organizations because the business was not economically successful. The decision came one week after reporters and editors voted to join a union, which Ricketts had vehemently opposed.

The closure leaves a void in New York City's news ecosystem, which has drastically changed in the digital age. According to WNYC's Vice President for News  Jim Schachter, when community news sites like these shut down, the community itself suffers.

"You have a situation where things drift up to fill the space: fake news, bleeds-that-leads kind of news, but the important, consequential things don't get dug out," Schachter told WNYC host Jami Floyd. "And there's been research that shows as a result of the decline in local news, people don't vote, people are less civically engaged, we have less of a community."