At the Suns peak, it employed more than 400 journalists, with reporters in London and Tokyo and Jerusalem. The hollowing-out of the Chicago Tribune was noted in the national press, of course. [32], The company has been criticized for investing money for pensions of newspaper employees in funds it manages itself. | Michael Gray, WIkimedia Commons. But even for a group of journalists, it was tough to keep the publics attention. In the for-profit news arena, Knight is spurring the digital transformation of local newsrooms through the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, Sherry said. No response came back. We must finally require the online tech behemoths, such as Google, Apple, and Facebook, to fairly compensate us for our original news content, he told me. At the time, even savvy media insiders like Martin Langeveld wistfully predicted Alden would keep newspapers future in mind: Smith knows that the only way to win his big bet on the future of newspapers is to turn them into nimble, modern digital news enterprises.. 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. Over the course of seven years, Alden doubled profits in its Bay Area News Group newspapers, another home to cutbacks. 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. 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. During its five-year run with Alden, it seems quite unlikely that no one at Knight knew about the hedge funds slash-and-burn strategy for two reasons. For Freeman and his investors to come out ahead, they didnt need to worry about the long-term health of the assetsthey just needed to maximize profits as quickly as possible. The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. In Orlando, the Sentinel ran an editorial pleading with the community to deliver us from Alden and comparing the hedge fund to a biblical plague of locusts. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, reporters held reader forums where they tried to instill a sense of urgency about the threat Alden posed to The Morning Call. Earnest and unpolished, with a perpetually mussed mop of hair, Bainum presented himself as a contrast to the cutthroat capitalists at Alden. . To many, it just didnt seem possible that Alden would instead choose to destroy newspapers by laying off the workforce en masse and stripping papers of all their assets. 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. Orders for non-defence capital goods excluding aircraft a closely watched proxy for business investment, rose 0.8 per cent in January from a month earlier, comfortably above economists . Prior to the acquisition of the Tribune Company, we purchased substantially all of our newspapers out of bankruptcy or close to liquidation, he told me. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. When a reporter asked if their work was still valued, the editor sounded deflated. The bid by Alden Global Capital, which already owns about 200 local newspapers, had faced resistance from Tribune staff and last-ditch competition. (Freeman denied this characterization through a spokesperson. It will rely initially on philanthropic donations, but he aims to sell enough subscriptions to make it self-sustaining within five years. "Local newspaper brands and operations are the engines that power trusted local news in communities across the United States," Heath Freeman, president of Alden Global Capital, said in a . Youd be surprised. Knight first reported its investment in Alden in 2010, noting the fair market value of its Alden holdings was $13.4 million. So why be surprised that Knight-Ridder or anyone else is investing in destructive but profitable ventures? Gerry Smith. It was clear that they didnt care about this being a business in the future. [4][13], In November 2021, Alden made an offer to Lee to purchase the company in its entirety for roughly $141 million. You need real capital to move the needle, he told me. That may well be the future of local news, he says. It is the nations second-largest newspaper owner by circulation. And everyone knows its going to run dry.. I sort of bully people around to get stuff done, he boasted to The Washington Post in 1985. The Ubiquity - The student news site of Quartz Hill High School 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 . The scene was somehow even grimmer than Id imagined. Alden, which owns more than 200 newspapers across the country, has developed a reputation for using extensive layoffs and severe cost cuts at the newspapers it owns. "The question is, will local communities decide that this is an important issue, that it's worth saving these newspapers, protecting them from firms like Alden, or will they decide that they don't really care?" When The New York Times profiles him in 1991, it notes that he excels at profiting from other peoples misery and quotes a parade of disgruntled clients and partners. It's a tangled tale but essentially Asylum produced a film for the McDonald's charitable foundation for Leo. Below are highlights from his conversation with Morning Edition's A Martnez. 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. Its not the name or the flag., He may get his wish. On Monday, Dail It felt important. He gained 100 pounds and started grinding his teeth at night. Shortly after the Tribune deal closed earlier this year, I began trying to interview the men behind Alden Capital. 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. Traditional newspaper business model says you make 95% of your money off ad sales and the rest off subscriptions. I asked. [4], Alden purchased a 5.9-percent stake in Lee Enterprises in January 2020. 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 . They were very tight. Freeman has resisted elaborating on his relationship with Smith, saying simply that they were family friends before going into business together. Two veteran journalists from the Chicago Tribune published an op-ed on Sunday challenging one of the paper's principal owners, the New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital. The largest share of the blame was assigned to the Tribune board for allowing the sale to Alden to go through. In a press release Monday, Nov. 22, 2021 Alden said it sent Lee's board a letter with the offer. Maybe theyd cancel their subscriptions eventually; maybe the papers would fold altogether. When the Chicago Tribune held a Save Local News rally, most of the people who showed up were members of the media. Its not as if the Tribune is just withering on the vine despite the best efforts of the gardeners, Charlie Johnson, a former Metro reporter, told me after the latest round of buyouts this summer. 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. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith. ", "The most feared owner in American journalism looks set to take some of its greatest assets", "Minority shareholder sues Denver Post parent and NY hedge fund over 'breaches of fiduciary duty', "What does the Chicago Tribune sale mean for the future of newsrooms? Caleb will later recall, in an interview with D Magazine, asking his dad why he works so hard. 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. But that's not true for all of them. 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." Theyre being targeted by investors who have figured out how to get rich by strip-mining local-news outfits. In the Hyatt meeting, Ted Venetoulis, a former Baltimore politician, advised the reporters to pick a noisy public fight: Set up a war room, circulate petitions, hold events to rally the city against Alden. I felt like a terrible reporter because I couldnt get to everything.. After congratulating him on closing the deal, Bainum said he was still interested in buying the Sun if Alden was willing to negotiate. He quotes H. L. Mencken, the papers crusading 20th-century columnist, on the joys of journalism: It is really the life of kings. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. But there are some clues here and there. What most concerns him is how his city will manage without a robust paper keeping tabs on the people in charge. The Tampa Bay Times has sold its printing plant at 1301 34th St. N to a real estate arm of Alden Global Capital, a New York hedge fund that is the second-largest newspaper owner in the country. But we dont know, because they arent saying. Other records turned up from public pension funds and filings of publicly traded companies. Im worried the worst is yet to come. It seemed reasonable to ask that they answer a few questions. 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. Baltimore has always had its problems, he told me. This is a subscription-based business.. If accepted, the $24 per share purchase price would . The Tribune Tower rises above the streets of downtown Chicago in a majestic snarl of Gothic spires and flying buttresses that were designed to exude power and prestige. Connecting this to the current state of American newspaper ownership seems rather tenuous.. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. NPR reached out to Alden for a response. "[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. 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. Next up: Chicago, Baltimore, and the New York Daily News. (Freeman denied this through a spokesperson.) And when Chicago suffered a brutal summer crime wave, the paper had no one on the night shift to listen to the police scanner. The 21st century has seen many of these generational owners flee the industry, to devastating effect. Vallejo deserves better. A few weeks after the story came out, he was fired. But outside the industry, few seemed to notice. "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 . It played with my mind a little bit, Glidden told me. Coppins notes that there's even some research indicating that city budgets increase as a result, because corruption and dysfunction can take hold without a newspaper to hold powerful people to account. Alden, which took Chicago-based newspaper chain Tribune Publishing private in May, said it made a proposal to buy Lee for $24 a share in cash, a 30% premium to Friday's closing price for . But while its true that Alden entered the industry by purchasing floundering newspapers, not all of them were necessarily doomed to liquidation. Hes impressed by their journalism, he told me, but his clearest takeaway is that theyre not nearly well funded enough. This is the story weve been telling for decades about the dying local-news industry, and its not without truth. Several interim executive positions were also filled by people related to Alden or its parent, Smith Management LLC.[23]. Next year, Bainum will launch The Baltimore Banner, an all-digital, nonprofit news outlet. 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 . But he says the worst culprit is the hedge fund Alden Global Capital, which bought the Mercury in 2011 and has since sold the paper's building and slashed newsroom staff by about 70%. Collectively, they control about one-half of daily newspapers in the U.S. But maybe the clearest illustration is in Vallejo, California, a city of about 120,000 people 30 miles north of San Francisco. 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. Smith began investing in newspapers and media around the same time. 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. Well, that wasnt the point. . When Alden first got into the news business, Freeman seemed willing to indulge some innovation. The men killing Americas newspapers, how Slack upended the workplace, and the new meth. [15][16] In March 2018, Margaret Sullivan, the media columnist for The Washington Post, called Alden "one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism. Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns. [10][19][20], The company has its origins in R.D. Many in the journalism industry, watching lawsuits play out in Australia and Europe, have held out hope in recent years that Google and Facebook will be compelled to share their advertising revenue with the local outlets whose content populates their platforms. Shareholders of Tribune Publishing, one of the country's largest newspaper chains, on Friday approved a takeover by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Most of his investments are defined by a cold pragmatism, but he takes a more personal interest in the media sector. At the end of last month, Alden Global Capital, a notorious newspaper-owning hedge fund, sought to stake its claim on one of the last newspaper chains it hasn't yet touched: Lee Enterprises, which owns 90 publications across the country.Alden, which currently owns six percent of Lee's stock, sent an unsolicited offer to purchase the newspaper chain for $24 per share. [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. The 1% own and operate the . After a contentious presidential race and amid a still-raging pandemic, there was a limited supply of outrage and sympathy to spare for local reporters. 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. about two hundred American newspapers. Alden Global Capital revealed a proposal Monday to purchase Lee Enterprise Inc. and its newspapers at $24 a share, casting alarm through the many newsrooms owned by Lee. ap psychology unit 2 progress check: mcq,
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