CityLab is a popular publication on HN, with over 1400 submissions and usually over a hundred comments on each. It's normal that people care more than about other companies.

I get the feeling I could make some kind of comment here about an aristocracy of labour, especially given that it's motherjones

The means of mass communication is the new means of mass production.

Is it time to seize it?

well idunno, last time around the people who seized it did a pretty piss-poor job afterwards. mostly they just ran it into the ground, in fact. there's a lesson to be learnt there.

It's not about the nine people. It's about the perceived guileless neutering of a media outlet by a far more powerful entity with financial attachments to a financially formidable presidential candidate.

Of course, it's too early to know if the perceived outcome is the intended or actual outcome. Whatever the outcome, this is still an event remarkable far beyond the bounds of those nine journalist's social circles, regardless of where the actual cause falls on the continuum between incompetence and malice.

But they were let go before the deal happened, so if anyone is the baddie it's CityLab/The Atlanic itself!

Well, the remaining folks could have gone anywhere, but now that they're employees of Bloomberg Media, they're expressly forbidden for writing anything _critical_ of any Democratic candidate for President.

This story fits into a larger context of wealthy investors buying up media properties and gutting their staff. It's extra relevant b/c Bloomberg is outrageously wealthy and running for president.

The right thing to do in those situations is clearly to just let the media properties die rather than salvage them.

Headline said "half" and most ppl didn't bother to read the article, so assumed it was a much larger number?

Bloomberg is running for president and his prior company shares his name.