By Julie Reynolds. These include the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and The Baltimore Sun. ", "Hedge Fund Reaches a Deal to Buy Tribune Publishing", "Opinion - Will The Chicago Tribune Be the Next Newspaper Picked to the Bone? In the ensuing exodus, the paper lost the Metro columnist who had championed the occupants of a troubled public-housing complex, and the editor who maintained a homicide database that the police couldnt manipulate, and the photographer who had produced beautiful portraits of the states undocumented immigrants, and the investigative reporter whod helped expose the governors offshore shell companies. This is predatory.. When a reporter asked if their work was still valued, the editor sounded deflated. [27] The Alden lawsuit asserts that the members of the Lee board "have every reason to maintain the status quo and their lucrative corporate positions" and that they are "focused more on [their] own power than what's best for the company. He stops talking to the press, refuses to be photographed, and rarely appears in public. Most responded with variations on the same question: Which recent stories from your newspapers have you especially appreciated? Is this company saving newspapers or profiting from their demise? - The Others pointed to Bainums financing partner, who pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour. But as long as Alden had made back its money, the investment would be a success. It emphasizes supporting the emergence of new, sustainable models for local news, through both grantmaking and research, Sherry told me, including grant programs for nonprofit news organizations. "[18], Alden received critical coverage from the editorial staff at the Denver Post, who described Alden Global Capital as "vulture capitalists" after multiple staff layoffs. But a sense of fatalism permeated the work. [2] [3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. In the face of that setback, Alden said it would turn to the tactic of filing a proxy statement asking the company's shareholders to vote no on board members Mary Junck and Herbert Moloney during the March 2022 board elections. I asked, What is the Foundations perspective on those investments now, as news of Aldens gutting of these newspapers has come to light?. The 5 global Trends in Journalism: 1 We've moved from a world where media organizations were gatekeepers to a world where media still creates the news agenda, but platform companies control access to audiences 2 this move to digital media generally does not generate filter bubbles Instead automated Serendipity + incidental exposure drive people . Rapid-fire changes underway at newspapers sold to cost-slashing hedge fund Alden Global Capital have led to a profound case of the jitters at newsrooms like the New York Daily News. Below are highlights from his conversation with Morning Edition's A Martnez. The Banner will launch with about 50 journalistsnot far from the size of the Sunand an ambitious mandate. Tribune shareholders approve takeover by Alden Global Capital Of course, its easy to romanticize past eras of journalism. California biotech billionaire and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns 24%, [13], In response, the board of Lee Enterprises enacted a shareholder rights plan, colloquially known as a "poison pill", in order to ward off the purchase attempt. Module 5- Journalism.pdf - Journalism Modules - The 5 Ws The paper had weathered a decade and a half of mismanagement and declining revenues and layoffs, and had finally achieved a kind of stability. After weeks of back-and-forth, he agreed to a phone call, but only if parts of the conversation could be on background (which is to say, I could use the information generally but not attribute it to him). In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business. These included several Cayman Island-based funds and another profiting from Greek debt stemming from that countrys financial crisis. What exactly went wrong would become a point of bitter debate among the journalists involved in the campaigns. The New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital - known for slashing its newspapers' budgets to extract escalated profits - won shareholder approval Friday for its $633 million bid to acquire the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain.. Tribune Publishing, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and other major newspapers, has agreed to be acquired by Alden Global Capital in a deal valued at $630 million . He says he visited the Tribune's office and was "really shocked by how grim the scene was." I asked. The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. Have you heard of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital? Alden Global Capital pushes to reshape Lee Enterprises board The scene was somehow even grimmer than Id imagined. Three days later, Bainumstill smarting from his experience with Alden, but worried about the Suns fatesent a pride-swallowing email to Freeman. hide caption. Probably not.. In recent months, hes been meeting with leaders of local-news start-ups across the countryThe Texas Tribune, the Daily Memphian, The City in New Yorkand collecting best practices. Stewart Bainum, since losing his bid for the Sun, has been quietly working on a new venture. Heath Freeman, president of Alden Global Capital, is known for pushing big cost reductions, which he says help to save newspapers. A vulture doesnt hold a wounded animals head underwater. A more honest argument might have claimed, as some economists have, that vulture funds like Alden play a useful role in creative destruction, dismantling outmoded businesses to make room for more innovative insurgents. Newspapers Have Been Struggling And Then Came The Pandemic - Forbes But it turned out that Smith had so many doorsteps16 mansions in Palm Beach alone, as of a few years ago, some of them behind gatesthat the plan proved impractical. Freeman would show up at business meetings straight from the gym, clad in athleisure, the executive recalled, and would find excuses to invoke his college-football heroics, saying things like When I played football at Duke, I learned some lessons about leadership. (Freeman was a walk-on placekicker on a team that won no games the year he played.). Local newsrooms strained by budget-slashing financial firms Next up: Chicago, Baltimore, and the New York Daily News. Several interim executive positions were also filled by people related to Alden or its parent, Smith Management LLC.[23]. Financially, it was a raw deal. but sadly on a global scale there is hardly any independent news sources left currently. Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns. Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that owns the Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, offered to buy Lee Enterprises Inc. for about $142 million, seeking a larger share of the . One conclusions even these reporters are hesitant to make is that we are all dealing within a capitalist system which has none, or few, principles to guide itself, apart from making a profit, no matter how. But maybe the clearest illustration is in Vallejo, California, a city of about 120,000 people 30 miles north of San Francisco. After a long walk down a windowless hallway lined with cinder-block walls, I got in an elevator, which deposited me near a modest bank of desks near the printing press. My question was did Knight know what Alden was doing to newspapers when it invested with the hedge fund, and does it regret that investment now? The practical effect of the death of local journalism is that you get what weve had, he told me, which is a halcyon time for corruption and mismanagement and basically misrule.. (Freeman denied this through a spokesperson.) Shares of Lee Enterprises Inc. rose sharply Monday after hedge fund Alden Global Capital LLC offered to buy the newspaper publisher for about $141 million. Plus how Facebook is a hostile foreign power, the engineers daughter, the collapse of music genres, Dostoyevsky, W. G. Sebald, nasty return logistics, and more. You need real capital to move the needle, he told me. Alden Global Capital owns 56 dailies under Digital First Media (Alden also owns 32% of Tribune 10 dailies in Column C.) Tribune Media owns 10 dailies. The Tribune Tower, the iconic former home of the Chicago Tribune, seen in Chicago, Illinois in 2015. If accepted, the $24 per share purchase price would . After Brian took his own life, in 2001, Smith became a mentor and confidant to Heath, who was in college at the time of his fathers death. Alden Global Capital makes an offer for Lee Enterprises, a big Some people believe that local newspapers will eventually be replaced by new publications, which Coppins describes as "built from the ground-up for the digital era." Denver Post reporters vs 'vulture capitalist' hedge fund Alden - CNBC At the time, the Sun had a bustling bureau in Annapolis, and he marveled at the reporters ability to sort the honest politicians from the political whores by exposing abuses of power. Hedge fund Alden to buy Tribune Publishing in deal valued at $630 Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund known for gutting local newsrooms, is seeking to buy Lee Enterprises (LEE), a publicly traded company with a chain of daily newspapers and other publications . Or to nearby Monterey, where the former Herald reporter Julie Reynolds says staffers were pushed to stop writing investigative features so they could produce multiple stories a day. But for all the theatrics, his marching orders were always the same: Cut more. There were sober op-eds and lamentations on Twitter and expressions of disappointment by professors of journalism. He can cite decades-old scoops and tell you whom they pissed off. | Michael Gray, WIkimedia Commons. His editor cited a supposed journalistic infraction (Glidden had reported the resignation of a school superintendent before an agreed-upon embargo). [4] [5] The company added more newspapers to its portfolio in May 2021 when it purchased Tribune . Its a hedge that went and bought up some titles that it milks for cash.. Reinventing their papers could require years of false starts and fine-tuningand, most important, a delayed payday for Aldens investors. Bainum envisioned rebuilding the paperwhich, by 2020, was down to a single full-time statehouse reporteras a nonprofit.