Coppins describes Alden as a specific type of firm: a "vulture hedge fund." 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune With his own money, he helps his brother launch the New York Press, a free alt-weekly in Manhattan. One known investor, however, is the Randall and Barbara Smith Foundation, named for Alden founder Smith and his wife. Morale tanked; reporters burned out. Otherwise, youre just peeing in the ocean.. They want to know who exactly profits when we learn, as Harvard Nieman Labs Ken Doctor recently reported, that the firm netted $160 million last year from its Digital First Media newspapers. [4][5] The company added more newspapers to its portfolio in May 2021 when it purchased Tribune Publishing and became the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States. Freeman was only slightly more accessible. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital in hunt for Lee Enterprises newspaper But maybe the clearest illustration is in Vallejo, California, a city of about 120,000 people 30 miles north of San Francisco. He scores big with a bankrupt aerospace manufacturer, and again with a Dallas-based drilling company. If they did it right, Venetoulis said, they just might be able to line up a local, civic-minded owner for the paper. It financed the deal with the help of Cerberusa private-equity firm that owned, among other businesses, the security company that trained Saudi operatives who participated in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Glidden had heard rumblings about the papers owners when he first took the job, but he hadnt paid much attention. Feeling burned by the hedge fund, Bainum decided to make a last-minute bid for all of Tribune Publishings newspapers, pledging to line up responsible buyers in each market. From the March 1914 issue: H. L. Mencken on newspaper morals, A story circulated throughout the companypossibly apocryphal, though no one could say for surethat when Freeman was informed that The Denver Post had won a Pulitzer in 2013, his first response was: Does that come with any money?. But he has a big idea: He believes theres serious money to be made in buying troubled companies, steering them into bankruptcy, and then selling them off in parts. Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. Its World War II correspondent brought firsthand news of Nazi concentration camps to American readers; its editorial page had the power to make or break political careers in Maryland. Some have even suggested that this represents Americas last chance to save its local-news industry. Instead, they gutted the place. Probably not.. How do you know who wins? the boy asks. Youd be surprised. Alden Global Capital - Wikipedia On Monday, Dail And two, by at least 2013, those of us who worked at Alden-controlled papers (like me) were already experiencing the slashing and burning. A vulture doesnt hold a wounded animals head underwater. [33], Alden Global Capital's management of American newspapers has been criticized. Digital First Media - Wikipedia Coordinated by . Theres no industry that I can think of more integral to a working democracy than the local-news business, he said. But the group that jumps out to me on the list is the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. About a month after The Baltimore Sun was acquired by Alden, a senior editor at the paper took questions from anxious reporters on Zoom. It was all about the next quarters profit margins, says Matt DeRienzo, who worked as a publisher for Aldens Connecticut newspapers before finally resigning. Aldens website contains no information beyond the firms name, and its list of investors is kept strictly confidential. [11], In November 2021, Alden Global Capital made an offer to purchase Lee Enterprises for $24 a share in cash, or about $141 million. Media . Am I going to win against capitalism in America? Alden Global to buy Tribune Publishing for $630 million - Los Angeles Times [10][19][20], The company has its origins in R.D. Im worried the worst is yet to come. This was the core of Freemans argument. And that has consequences for democracy, as journalist McKay Coppins writes in The Atlantic. The Tribune had been profitable when Alden took over. Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that Alden-owned newspapers have cut their staff at twice the rate of their competitors; not coincidentally, circulation has fallen faster too, according to Ken Doctor, a news-industry analyst who reviewed data from some of the papers. But a sense of fatalism permeated the work. Other records turned up from public pension funds and filings of publicly traded companies. [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. Baltimore has always had its problems, he told me. One acquaintance tells The Village Voice that hes the kind of guy who divests himself every couple of years to avoid ending up on lists of the worlds richest people. Lee blocks Alden Global Capital move for more board control - STLPR What threatens local newspapers now is not just digital disruption or abstract market forces. After all, it has a long and venerable history of supporting local news. Alden Global Capital is buying and gutting local newspapers : NPR - NPR.org 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. He studied art at Alfred University under sculptors Glenn Zweygardt and William Parry. 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 . The Denver Post has become the face of this struggle, due to an editorial published in its own pages lashing out against owners, New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital. 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. Around this time, Randy becomes preoccupied with privacy. Hedge fund Alden Global is buying newspaper chain Tribune Publishing Tribune Sale to Alden Approved by Shareholders - The New York Times That might sound like a losing formula, but these papers dont have to become sustainable businesses for Smith and Freeman to make money. Unless the Tribunes trajectory changes, Chicago may soon provide a grim case study. 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune Papers, Stop The Presses! But there was still a sliver of hope: Tribune and Alden agreed that the hedge fund would not increase its stake in the company for at least seven months. Fears for future of American journalism as hedge funds flex power What Alden's potential acquisition of Lee Enterprises means for 20-plus Its being snuffed out, quarter after quarter after quarter. We were sitting in a coffee shop in Logan Square, and he was still struggling to make sense of what had happened. Alden Global Capital Is Killing the Newsroom - Common Dreams Hedge fund Alden Global Capital in hunt for big newspaper chain Lee 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys - NPR With aggressive cost-cutting, Alden can operate its newspapers at a profit for years while turning out a steadily worse product, indifferent to the subscribers its alienating. And when Chicago suffered a brutal summer crime wave, the paper had no one on the night shift to listen to the police scanner. Some in the city started to wonder if the paper was even worth saving. My answer is its hard to know. Hes acutely aware of the risksI may end up with egg on my face, he saidbut he believes its worth trying to develop a successful model that could be replicated in other markets. The question was how. Tribune shareholders approve takeover by Alden Global Capital In February 2021, he announced a handshake deal to buy the Sun from Alden for $65 million once it acquired Tribune Publishing. NPR reached out to Alden for a response. The largest share of the blame was assigned to the Tribune board for allowing the sale to Alden to go through. Daily News spinoff stirs anxiety after Alden takeover - New York Post Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns. How this 'vulture' hedge fund's gutting of local newsrooms could hurt He used his own money to pull court records, and went years without going on a vacation. Lee Enterprises rejects Alden Global Capital's unsolicited proposal 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. Coppins offers several examples, like the Chicago Tribune and California's Vallejo Times-Herald. In the for-profit news arena, Knight is spurring the digital transformation of local newsrooms through the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, Sherry said. Tribune Publishing last month approved a $630m takeover deal with Alden Global Capital. This investment strategy does not come without social consequences. Baltimore is an underdog town, Liz Bowie, a Sun reporter who was at the meeting, told me. The Ubiquity - The student news site of Quartz Hill High School Its the meanness and the elegance of the capitalist marketplace brought to newspapers, Doctor told me. "60 Minutes" correspondent Jon Wertheim did a strong piece that aired Sunday night about the grim state of local newspapers, in part because of how hedge funds, such as Alden Global Capital . The scene was somehow even grimmer than Id imagined. Russ Smith is a puckish libertarian whose self-described contempt for the journalistic class animates the pages of the publication. New York hedge fund and U.S. newspaper consolidator Alden Global Capital LLC has made a proposal to take Lee Enterprises Inc. private in a deal that values the company at around $141 million. By the 1980s, this strategy has made Randy luxuriously wealthyvacations in the French Riviera, a family compound outside New York Cityand he has begun to school his children on the wonders of capitalism. Alden currently owns 32%. On the appointed afternoon, I dialed the number provided by his spokesperson and found myself talking to the most feared man in American newspapers. After college he worked at Hudson Studio, Art Foundry in Niverville, NY . I asked, What is the Foundations perspective on those investments now, as news of Aldens gutting of these newspapers has come to light?. If Knights total divestment from Alden in 2014 was because someone made an ethical decision to stop dealing with the vulture fund, good for them. I put the question to Freeman, but he declined to answer on the record. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital, one of the country's largest newspaper owners with a reputation for intense cost cuts and layoffs, has offered to buy the local newspaper chain Lee Enterprises . Some expressed exasperation with the staff of the Chicago Tribune, who were unable to find a single interested local buyer. Meanwhile, reporters fanned out across their respective cities in search of benevolent rich people to buy their newspapers. Alden, which already owned one-third of . No response came back. Two days after the deal was finalized, Alden announced an aggressive round of buyouts. A young man named Randall Duncan SmithRandy for shortstands next to his wife, Kathryn, answering quick-fire trivia questions in front of a live studio audience. What's in the fine print in Alden's offer to takeover Tribune? - The Next up: Chicago, Baltimore, and the New York Daily News. Meanwhile, the Tribunes remaining staff, which had been spread thin even before Alden came along, struggled to perform the newspapers most basic functions. The new owners had announced a round of buyouts, some beloved staffers were leaving, and those who remained were worried about the future. The story of Alden Capital begins on the set of a 1960s TV game show called Dream House. When Alden first started buying newspapers, at the tail end of the Great Recession, the industry responded with cautious optimism. The 21st century has seen many of these generational owners flee the industry, to devastating effect. Reading these stories now has a certain horror-movie quality: You want to somehow warn the unwitting victims of whats about to happen. That may well be the future of local news, he says. Lee Enterprises, the owner of daily newspapers in Winston-Salem and Greensboro, this morning rejected a hedge fund's proposal to take over the company.
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