Meanwhile, with few newsroom jobs left to eliminate, Alden continued to find creative ways to cut costs. Feb 16, 2021 at 8:05 pm. Who Profits From Alden Global Capital? You'd be surprised. These papers would have been liquidated if not for us stepping up.. At one point, I tracked down the photographer whod taken the only existing picture of Smith on the internet. By McKay Coppins. As the months passed, things kept getting worse. Im worried the worst is yet to come. 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 . The best architects of the era were invited to submit designs; lofty quotes about the Fourth Estate were selected to adorn the lobby. What exactly went wrong would become a point of bitter debate among the journalists involved in the campaigns. On the appointed afternoon, I dialed the number provided by his spokesperson and found myself talking to the most feared man in American newspapers. Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns. Hedge fund Alden in hunt for another big newspaper chain - WKMG The consequences can influence national politics as well; an analysis by Politico found that Donald Trump performed best during the 2016 election in places with limited access to local news. He scores big with a bankrupt aerospace manufacturer, and again with a Dallas-based drilling company. Alden Global to buy Tribune Publishing for $630 million - Los Angeles Times The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. The new owners did not fly to Chicago to address the staff, nor did they bother with paeans to the vital civic role of journalism. Over the course of seven years, Alden doubled profits in its Bay Area News Group newspapers, another home to cutbacks. In 2016 (year of the most recent 990 available), the foundation invested $17 million in Alden funds. Reading these stories now has a certain horror-movie quality: You want to somehow warn the unwitting victims of whats about to happen. Yes, today, it's a newspaper without a newsroom. NPR reached out to Alden for a response. With full control of Tribune Publishing, Alden Global Capital is scrambling to squeeze out a return on its $600 million investment in the struggling Chicago-based newspaper company. To find the papers current headquarters one afternoon in late June, I took a cab across town to an industrial block west of the river. Last week, Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund notorious for slashing costs at its local titles, came down on the No side of the question, with editorial boards at papers that it owns stating that they will no longer endorse candidates for governor, US senator, or president. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital will acquire the rest of what it does not already own of Tribune Publishing, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and other local newspapers . Alden is not a newspaper company, says Ann Marie Lipinski, a former editor in chief of the Chicago Tribune. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital will acquire the rest of what it does not already own of Tribune Publishing, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and other local newspapers, in a . A century later, the Tribune Tower has retained its grandeur. What Alden's potential acquisition of Lee Enterprises means for 20-plus A group of 11 community newspapers owned by Red Wing Publishing Co. have been sold to MediaNews Group, owner of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and more than 100 newspapers across the country. 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune Theres little evidence that Alden cares about the sustainability of its newspapers. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you . Live news updates from February 28: Tesla to build Mexico - ft.com Former Knight-Ridder headquarters. 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. But there are some clues here and there. Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. 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. "[28], In mid-February 2022, the Delaware court found in favor of Lee Enterprises. Connecting this to the current state of American newspaper ownership seems rather tenuous.. Alden Global Capital already owns 200 publications and a 6% stake in Lee Enterprises. It was like watching a slow-motion disaster, says Gregory Pratt, a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. "[25], In early December, the board of Lee unanimously rejected the Alden bid, saying that the Alden proposal "grossly undervalues Lee and fails to recognize the strength of our business today. Even as Aldens portfolio grew, Freeman rarely visited his newspapers. Alden Global Capital already had a 32% stake in Tribune Publishing, which owns famous names like the Tribune, Daily News, the Hartford Courant and others, and on Tuesday announced it would pay . Ken Kelleher - Creative Director / Artist - LinkedIn To David Simon, the whimpering end of The Baltimore Sun feels both inevitable and infuriating. In truth, Freeman didnt seem particularly interested in defending Aldens reputation. 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. The movement gained traction in some markets, with local politicians and celebrities expressing solidarity. [29] This attempt also failed, as shareholders returned both directors to the Lee board despite Alden's opposition. Alden Global Capital seeks to buy Lee Enterprises for $144M . 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. Some have even suggested that this represents Americas last chance to save its local-news industry. His editor cited a supposed journalistic infraction (Glidden had reported the resignation of a school superintendent before an agreed-upon embargo). Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. "[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. Am I going to win against capitalism in America? To replace a paper like the Sun would require a large, talented staff that covers not just government, but sports and schools and restaurants and art. Alden Global Capital has currently bid to buy all of Tribune. The hollowing-out of the Chicago Tribune was noted in the national press, of course. The Tribune Tower, the iconic former home of the Chicago Tribune, seen in Chicago, Illinois in 2015. 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. It's a tangled tale but essentially Asylum produced a film for the McDonald's charitable foundation for Leo. They call Alden a vulture hedge fund, and I think thats honestly a misnomer, Johnson said. I sort of bully people around to get stuff done, he boasted to The Washington Post in 1985. 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 . [11], In November 2021, Alden Global Capital made an offer to purchase Lee Enterprises for $24 a share in cash, or about $141 million. Opinions - Help yourself. Is it ever okay to nick an idea? I felt like a terrible reporter because I couldnt get to everything.. But even for a group of journalists, it was tough to keep the publics attention. Is this company saving newspapers or profiting from their demise? - The 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 . He shut down Project Thunderdome, parted ways with Paton, and placed all of Aldens newspapers on the auction block. 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. This is a subscription-based business.. Of course, its easy to romanticize past eras of journalism. 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. With its acquisition of Tribune Publishing earlier this year, Alden now controls more than 200 newspapers, including some of the countrys most famous and influential: the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, the New York Daily News. 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 . Its a hedge that went and bought up some titles that it milks for cash.. After all, it has a long and venerable history of supporting local news. [2][3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. Like many alumni of the Sun, Simon is steeped in the papers history. It is the nations second-largest newspaper owner by circulation. For Freeman, newspapers are financial assets and nothing morenumbers to be rearranged on spreadsheets until they produce the maximum returns for investors. 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. I asked, What is the Foundations perspective on those investments now, as news of Aldens gutting of these newspapers has come to light?. When the journalists created a Slack channel to coordinate their efforts across multiple newspapers, they dubbed it Project Mayhem.. What's in the fine print in Alden's offer to takeover Tribune? - The But in the case of local news, nothing comparable is ready to replace these papers when they die. Module 5- Journalism.pdf - Journalism Modules - The 5 Ws He quotes H. L. Mencken, the papers crusading 20th-century columnist, on the joys of journalism: It is really the life of kings. For those who cared about the future of local news, it was hard to imagine a better outcomewhich made it all the more devastating when the bid fell through. He started as a general-assignment reporter, covering local crime and community events. Alden Global Capital Is Killing the Newsroom - Common Dreams In budget meetings, according to the former executive, Freeman hectored local publishers, demanding that they produce detailed numbers off the top of their head and then humiliating them when they couldnt. 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. 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 . Iowa-based Lee Enterprises asks investors to help fight off hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Some in the industry say they wouldnt be surprised if Smith and Freeman end up becoming the biggest newspaper moguls in U.S. history. . Read: Local news is dying, and Americans have no idea, From 2015 to 2017, he presided over staff reductions of 36 percent across Aldens newspapers, according to an analysis by the NewsGuild (a union that also represents employees of The Atlantic). What most concerns him is how his city will manage without a robust paper keeping tabs on the people in charge. Aldens website contains no information beyond the firms name, and its list of investors is kept strictly confidential. As a reporter whos covered Alden Global Capital for more than two years, people often ask me who are the investors behind the hedge fund that owns one of Americas largest newspaper chains? He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. Baltimore has always had its problems, he told me. Hedge fund Alden Global is buying newspaper chain Tribune Publishing Smith & Company. When the city-hall reporter left a few months later, he picked up that beat too. Newspapers Affect Us, Often In Ways We Don't Realize, 'Project Mayhem': Reporters Race To Save Tribune Papers From 'Vulture' Fund. Frustrated and worn out, Glidden broke down one day last spring when a reporter from The Washington Post called. 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. Smith & Company, a firm founded by Randall Duncan Smith, initially using the $20,000 cash prize he and his wife won on the 1968-1970 gameshow Dream House. The details of how Smith got to know him are opaque, but the resulting loyalty was evident. When a reporter asked if their work was still valued, the editor sounded deflated. Freeman was clearly aware of his reputation for ruthlessness, but he seemed to regard Aldens commitment to cost-cutting as a badge of honorthe thing that distinguished him from the saps and cowards who made up Americas previous generation of newspaper owners. "[34], In October 2021, The Atlantic examined the impact of Alden's acquisition of the Chicago Tribune, noting that, "The new owners did not fly to Chicago to address the staff, nor did they bother with paeans to the vital civic role of journalism. 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. Other large shareholders include Californian asset manager Capital Group and UK fund manager Jupiter Asset Management. [4][13], In November 2021, Alden made an offer to Lee to purchase the company in its entirety for roughly $141 million. Instead, they gutted the place. Randy claims no editorial role in the Press, and his investment in the projectwhich has little chance of producing the kind of return hes accustomed tocould be chalked up to brotherly loyalty. Many of the operators were looking at the newspaper business as a local advertising business, he said, and we didnt believe that was the right way to look at it. The scene was somehow even grimmer than Id imagined. Ken Kelleher is an American sculptor. 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 . [13], Newspapers in Alden's portfolio include Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Boston Herald, The Mercury News, East Bay Times, The Orange County Register, and Orlando Sentinel. Hedge fund Alden in hunt for another big newspaper chain
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