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DNAinfo.com’s Web sites cover neighborhood news in New York and Chicago. Can billionaire Joe Ricketts’ venture achieve the financial success that has been elusive for similar startups?

Pop superstar Kelly Clarkson will give her first hometown concert in more than a year, performing at a very special show to benefit the Opportunity Education Foundation at the Verizon Theatre at Grand Prairie, Texas, on March 1.

Joe Ricketts, a Sublette County rancher and the founder of TD Ameritrade, stepped in at the 11th hour with money to complete the buyout of 58,000 acres of gas leases in the basin. The area had been targeted for development by Plains Production and Exploration, known as PXP.

This summer, St. Rocco School third grade teacher Maryann Bennett had the opportunity to spend two weeks in Africa through the Opportunity Education Foundation.

Joe Ricketts, a Sublette County rancher and the founder of TD Ameritrade, stepped in at the 11th hour with money to complete the buyout of 58,000 acres of gas leases in the basin. The area had been targeted for development by Plains Production and Exploration, known as PXP.

A conservation group was able to preserve part of a national forest in western Wyoming with an $8.75 million buyout of oil and gas leases secured by last-minute donations, including $750,000 from the founder of online stockbroker TD Ameritrade.

A team of Ricketts' draft horses, of the Percheron breed, will help promote the new show when they appear in the Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena, Calif., clip-clopping just ahead of RFD-TV's classic-tractor-themed float in the last half-hour of the two-hour parade, which begins airing at 10 a.m. on New Year's Day.

The ticket to the White House could be any number of things. Early voting. High turnout among the party’s base. Ohio. A one-stop destination for the latest political news — from The Times and other top sources. Plus opinion, polls, campaign data and video. But Republicans and Democrats seem to agree that their chances improve markedly if they can win over one important constituency: the audience of “Dancing With the Stars.”

Greta van Susteren discusses the "WhyIChangedMyVote" ad campaign from Ending Spending Action Fund on her latest show.

Supporters of Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) might be surprised to learn that among them is a billionaire behind a super PAC that has pledged to spend $10 million helping Mitt Romney get elected.

Mark Konkol, the Chicago journalism superstar who won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting last year, is leaving the Sun-Times to join the startup of a hyperlocal digital news service covering city neighborhoods.

After amassing great wealth building TD Ameritrade, Joe Ricketts bought the Chicago Cubs for his family. Now he is spending millions to promote his political vision and unseat the president. Meet a big behind-the-scenes player in the newly deregulated electoral system.

Another super PAC contribution is drawing attention, this one via Joe Ricketts, the founder of online brokerage TD Ameritrade, Inc. His family also owns the Chicago Cubs.

Unlike the controversial aborted pitch for a $10-million attack highlighting Rev. Jeremiah Wright, billionaire investor Joe Ricketts’s new super PAC campaign will use themes and players blessed by Mitt Romney and his allies.

Chicago Cubs owner Joe Ricketts will spend $10 million on television ads and voter-outreach efforts to help Republican challenger Mitt Romney defeat President Barack Obama, aides to Ricketts said today.

A billionaire investor whose family owns the Chicago Cubs is pressing ahead with a multimillion-dollar pro-Republican political campaign, bucking a political furor that emerged when the effort first become public.

A fiscal responsibility group founded by bilionaire investor Joe Ricketts has taken it upon themselves to assign Congress a good old-fashioned summer reading assignment: a book on the "fiscal cliff."

Joe Ricketts, the Nebraska-born mogul, fiscally conservative political donor and founder of the online brokerage titan TD Ameritrade, spent much of his life on the plains, where everything is flat. So when he decided in 2006, at the age of 65, to get a pièd-a-terre in Manhattan, Ricketts went for altitude, buying a condo on the 78th floor of the Times Warner Center's north tower for $29.2 million.

“The Conspirator,” the story of the only woman charged in the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. It had been directed by Robert Redford. And it had been bankrolled by Joe Ricketts.

In October, TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts retired from the Board of Directors after more than 35 years with the Company. To commemorate his accomplishments and thank him for all of his contributions to the Company, President and Chief Executive Officer Fred Tomczyk will lead a short presentation following the business portion of this year's annual meeting.

There is certainly a strong sense that the site's hyper-local coverage is hitting gaps left by the tabloids, digitally torn between citywide and national coverage. Run by a young woman, Leela de Kretser, who has beat reporters working from laptops dotted round the city rather than from expensive midtown offices or SoHo lofts, DNAinfo has time and cost structure on its side

Ending Spending, a nonprofit 501(c) 4 advocacy group, has announced a $400,000 ad buy that will feature its 30-second commercial on cable news channels in Iowa starting Thursday.

The already saturated Iowa airwaves are about to be flooded with another major political advertising barrage as a well-funded anti-spending group launches a TV campaign ahead of the Jan. 3 caucuses.

DNAinfo, the hyperlocal news start-up that provides hard-hitting community reporting for Manhattan's densely packed and notoriously amorphous neighborhoods, is in the process of expanding into the city's outer boroughs and, in time, Chicago.

According to Ms. de Kretser, DNAinfo's locally embedded reporters are its best marketing tool. It's often after interfacing with a DNAinfo reporter that a local business inquires about advertising opportunities.

Double T Bison Ranch will be situated on private land on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation on both sides of U.S. Highway 89 north of Babb. It will be operated by a parent company called Golden Bison, which is owned by businessman Joe Ricketts, the founder of Omaha, Neb.-based TD Ameritrade.

TD Ameritrade Holding Corporation (NASDAQ: AMTD), its board of directors, management team and more than 5,000 associates nationwide would today like to say, “Thank you,” to Joe Ricketts, who after more than 35 years with the Company he founded and built has decided to retire from its Board of Directors next month.

Joe Ricketts announced today that he would retire from the TD Ameritrade board of directors to concentrate fully on entrepreneurship and philanthropy.

It started with a casual conversation on another continent. And as with many of Joe Ricketts' ventures, an idea, a dream. In 2004, Ricketts, the founder of TD Ameritrade, traveled to Africa with a group of family and friends.

Joe Ricketts has a simple objective for his new production company: He wants you to go to his movies and then talk about them. “I really like the idea of people seeing a movie and then visiting about it, having cocktails or dinner and talking about the movie,” he said.

Some people look at Manhattan and see the world's most crowded media market. Not J. Joseph Ricketts. The founder of online brokerage TD Ameritrade and new owner of the Chicago Cubs perceives an opportunity as wide as the Hudson River for his year-old local news operation, DNAinfo.com.

Just one month after Cantor declared war on earmarks, Republicans in the House and Senate will swear off earmarks for the next two years. It wouldn’t have happened without the help of the newly formed group Taxpayers Against Earmarks.

The voters sent a clear message to stop reckless spending. Yet the earmarking system that perpetuates the power of incumbency, fosters a culture of dependency on the government, and produced the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” and influence-peddling scandals that sent many to prison, still exists.

“The Conspirator,” Robert Redford’s independently produced picture about the hanging of Mary Surratt in the wake of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, has a home. Lionsgate and Roadside Attractions said they acquired rights to distribute the film in the United States and plan to release it next spring.

On Saturday night, at the Gala presentation of his latest directorial effort “The Conspirator,” Robert Redford gave his biggest thanks of the evening to Joe Ricketts, the Ameritrade founder, who backed the film.

Turns out the Ricketts family brought more to the Cubs than fresh faces and a remodeled players' locker room. The family's ranch in Little Jackson Hole, Wyo., produces humanely raised, all-natural bison meat, which goes into the High Plains Bison hot dog, available at the Chicago Dogs carts at various points in the park.

Calling all Anglers. The remote Lodge at Jackson Fork Ranch, which occupies six miles along the Upper Hoback River in Wyoming, challenges anglers to come catch four native species of the Wyoming cutthroat trout.