Morale tanked; reporters burned out. After serving in the Carter administrations Treasury Department, Brian became widely knownand fearedin the 80s for his hard-line negotiating style. At their worst, they used their papers to maintain oppressive social hierarchies. Research shows that when local newspapers disappear or are dramatically gutted, communities tend to see lower voter turnout, increased polarization, a general erosion of civic engagement and an environment in which misinformation and conspiracy theories can spread more easily. Scott Olson/Getty Images Tampa Bay Times sells printing plant to developer for $21 million He had spoken on this issue before, and it was easy to see why. 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 for . Its hard to imagine theyd show, anyway. So who is investing with them? "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 final product, completed in 1925, was an architectural spectacle unlike anything the city had seen beforeromance in stone and steel, as one writer described it. Who Profits From Alden Global Capital? The largest share of the blame was assigned to the Tribune board for allowing the sale to Alden to go through. I would know he didnt mean it, and he would know he didnt mean it, but he would at least go through the motions. That's because the fund is stepping in to buy and then gut newsrooms across the country. While some finance reporters noted that Smiths newspaper investments were all losing value, none seemed to notice that Smith and Aldens president Heath Freeman would soon start strip mining their news companies real estate and other assets. 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 for about $141 million. In legal filings, Alden has acknowledged diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from its newspapers into risky bets on commercial real estate, a bankrupt pharmacy chain, and Greek debt bonds. How Alden Global Capital will make money owning Tribune Publishing Freeman was only slightly more accessible. Alden's holdings already spanned the country, including the . You have no way of knowing that if you dont have some nosy son of a bitch asking a lot of questions down there, he told me. But for that to happen, the Big Tech money would need to flow to underfunded newsrooms, not into the pockets of Aldens investors. 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. Alden Global to buy Tribune Publishing for $630 million - Los Angeles Times Smith. I asked. Vallejo deserves better. A few weeks after the story came out, he was fired. [2] Its managing director is Heath Freeman. Reporters kept reporting, and editors kept editing, and the union kept looking for ways to put pressure on Alden. But even for a group of journalists, it was tough to keep the publics attention. , From the February 1905 issue: The confessions of a newspaper woman, The papers union hired a PR firm to launch a public-awareness campaign under the banner Save Our Sun and published a letter calling on the Tribune board to sell the paper to local owners. On more than one occasion, according to people I spoke with, he asked aloud, What do all these people do? According to the former executive, Freeman once suggested in a meeting that Aldens newspapers could get rid of all their full-time reporters and rely entirely on freelancers. But I had underestimated how little Aldens founders care about their standing in the journalism world. Freeman, meanwhile, would later gloat to colleagues that Bainum was never serious about buying the newspapers and just wanted to bask in the worshipful media coverage his bid generated. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you . But in the meantime, there isn't really anything that can fill the hole these newspapers will leave if they're shut down. Others pointed to Bainums financing partner, who pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour. Collectively, they control about one-half of daily newspapers in the U.S. What Alden's potential acquisition of Lee Enterprises means for 20-plus Hedge fund reaches $630m deal to buy remaining Tribune Publishing A Cornell grad with an M.B.A., Randy is on a partner track at Bear Stearns, where hes poised to make a comfortable fortune simply by climbing the ladder. Around this time, Randy becomes preoccupied with privacy. The purchase represents the culmination of Alden's years-long drive to take over the company and its storied titles . Its the meanness and the elegance of the capitalist marketplace brought to newspapers, Doctor told me. 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. By the charitys own accounting, it lost $ 2.3 million in book value on a $17 million investment that year. And everyone knows its going to run dry.. To David Simon, the whimpering end of The Baltimore Sun feels both inevitable and infuriating. What threatens local newspapers now is not just digital disruption or abstract market forces. A former Sun reporter whose work on the police beat famously led to his creation of The Wire on HBO, Simon told me the paper had suffered for years under a series of blundering corporate ownersand it was only a matter of time before an enterprise as cold-blooded as Alden finally put it out of its misery. After congratulating him on closing the deal, Bainum said he was still interested in buying the Sun if Alden was willing to negotiate. You can bypass most soft paywalls with a little CSS knowledge Daily News spinoff stirs anxiety after Alden takeover - New York Post So why be surprised that Knight-Ridder or anyone else is investing in destructive but profitable ventures? But by 2013, despite deep losses to Alden funds overall values in the previous two years, Smith was able to begin buying his now infamous swath of South Florida mansions for $58 million and Freeman was acquiring multi-million-dollar New York condos. Tribune shareholders approve takeover by Alden Global Capital He took particular pride in finding novel ways to give away his family fortune, funding child-poverty initiatives in Baltimore and prenatal care for women in Liberia. AP. The 1% own and operate the . Hedge fund Alden's bid for owner of Virginian-Pilot, Daily Press This all seemed especially relevant considering many Alden/DFM papers were previously part of the Knight-Ridder chain, the family news empire from which the foundation sprang. You need real capital to move the needle, he told me. 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. It turned out that those ownersNew York hedge funders whom Glidden took to calling the lizard peoplewere laser-focused on increasing the papers profit margins. Dec 9, 2021. For a fleeting moment, Aldens newspapers became unexpected darlings of the journalism industrywritten about by Poynter and Nieman Lab, endorsed by academics like Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis. Alden Global Capital, the New York hedge fund that bought Tribune Publishing this year, said on Monday that it was making an offer for another big American newspaper chain, Lee . "[28], In mid-February 2022, the Delaware court found in favor of Lee Enterprises. The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. A vulture doesnt hold a wounded animals head underwater. He was fired after criticizing Alden in a Washington Post interview. "A lot of cities almost operate with the assumption that there will be at least one local newspaper, in some cases several local newspapers, acting as a check on the authorities," he says. 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune How exactly Randall Smith chose Heath Freeman as his protg is a matter of speculation among those who have worked for the two of them. He told me it will begin with an annual operating budget of $15 million, unprecedented for an outfit of this kind. October 14, 2021. Coppins offers several examples, like the Chicago Tribune and California's Vallejo Times-Herald. "[26] Shortly thereafter, Alden Global, through its operating unit Strategic Investment Opportunities, filed a lawsuit in state court in Delaware against Lee Enterprises. Craigslist killed the Classified section, Google and Facebook swallowed up the ad market, and a procession of hapless newspaper owners failed to adapt to the digital-media age, making obsolescence inevitable. At the same time, he increased subscription prices in many markets; it would take awhile for subscribersmany of them older loyalists who didnt carefully track their billsto notice that they were paying more for a worse product. The most promising prospect materialized in Baltimore, where a hotel magnate named Stewart Bainum Jr. expressed interest in the Sun. Meet the Hedge Fund Boss Who Just Bought Tribune's Newspapers