Theyre being targeted by investors who have figured out how to get rich by strip-mining local-news outfits. Freemans father, Brian, was a successful investment banker who specialized in making deals on behalf of labor unions. Have you heard of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital? 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. 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). Knight first reported its investment in Alden in 2010, noting the fair market value of its Alden holdings was $13.4 million. Neither man will ever be the guest of honor at the annual dinner for the Committee to Protect Journalistsand thats probably fine by them. Collectively, they control about one-half of daily newspapers in the U.S. We dont hear from them Theyre, like, nameless, faceless people., In the months that followed, the Sun did not immediately experience the same deep staff cuts that other papers did. But I had underestimated how little Aldens founders care about their standing in the journalism world. Already the largest shareholder . Alden, which has built a reputation as one of the newspaper industry's most aggressive cost-cutters, became Tribune Publishing's largest shareholder in November 2019 and owns a 31.3% stake. Prior to the buildings completion, McCormick directed his foreign correspondents to collect fragments of various historical sitesa brick from the Great Wall of China, an emblem from St. Peters Basilicaand send them back to be embedded in the towers facade. But in the meantime, there isn't really anything that can fill the hole these newspapers will leave if they're shut down. When lawmakers pressed for details last year on who funds Alden, the company replied that there may be certain legal entities and organizational structures formed outside of the United States.. He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. 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. 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 . . When John Glidden first joined the Vallejo Times-Herald, in 2014, it had a staff of about a dozen reporters, editors, and photographers. he asks. The purchase represents the culmination of Alden's years-long drive to take over the company and its storied titles . Well, that wasnt the point. How do you know who wins? the boy asks. In 2011, Paton launched an ambitious initiative he called Project Thunderdome, hiring more than 50 journalists in New York and strategically deploying them to supplement short-staffed local newsrooms. And two, by at least 2013, those of us who worked at Alden-controlled papers (like me) were already experiencing the slashing and burning. 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. As a reporter who's 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 America's largest newspaper chains?. He writes a weekly column called Mugger that savages the citys journalists by name and frequently runs to 10,000 words. Alden completed its takeover of the Tribune papers in May. When a reporter asked if their work was still valued, the editor sounded deflated. One early article, in the trade publication Poynter, suggested that Aldens interest in the local-news business could be seen as flattering and quoted the owner of The Denver Post as saying he had enormous respect for the firm. Chicago-based Tribune Publishing on Tuesday announced a proposed sale to hedge fund Alden Global Capital in a deal valued at $630 million. Alden is known for . 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). As a young man, hed studied at divinity school before taking over his fathers company, and decades later he still carried a healthy sense of noblesse oblige. Alden-owned newspapers have cut their staff at twice the rate of their competitors, for all of Tribune Publishings newspapers, security company that trained Saudi operatives. It seemed reasonable to ask that they answer a few questions. 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. Otherwise, youre just peeing in the ocean.. 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.). Another ex-publisher told me Freeman believed that local newspapers should be treated like any other commodity in an extractive business. 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 as an organization that believes that quality information is essential for individuals and communities to make their own bestchoices, it was disappointing that the foundation couldnt simply own up to its error in judgment when it came to Alden. Alden gradually took control of the papers that would become DFM. This company that owns us now seems to still be prettyI dont even know how to put it, the editor said, according to a recording of the meeting obtained by The Atlantic. Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. It will rely initially on philanthropic donations, but he aims to sell enough subscriptions to make it self-sustaining within five years. 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 . Shareholders of Tribune Publishing, one of the country's largest newspaper chains, on Friday approved a takeover by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Coordinated by . Alden began its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in 2019, when they paid $117.9 million to Michael Ferro for his 25.2-percent stake. Alden currently owns 32%. Other large shareholders include Californian asset manager Capital Group and UK fund manager Jupiter Asset Management. NPR's A Martnez talks to McKay Coppins of The Atlantic about how a hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, is buying and then gutting newspapers and the implications for democracy. Instead, they gutted the place. Tuesday, 23 November 2021 07:46 PM EST. On . Longtime Tribune staffers had seen their share of bad corporate overlords, but this felt more calculated, more sinister. The rationale offered by the board was, Consistent with its fiduciary duties, Lees Board has taken this action to ensure our shareholders receive fair treatment, full transparency and protection in connection with Aldens unsolicited proposal to acquire Lee. hide caption. ", "Denver Post Rebels Against Its Hedge-Fund Ownership", "Tribune Says Sale to Alden Wins Approval Amid Confusion Over Key Shareholder's Vote", "Lee Enterprises Shares Jump on Takeover Offer From Alden", "The vulture is hungry again: Alden Global Capital wants to buy a few hundred more newspapers", "Colorado Group Pushes to Buy Embattled Denver Post From New York Hedge Fund", "The battle for Tribune: Inside the campaign to find new owners for a legendary group of newspapers", "Is this strip-mining or journalism? 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. At one point, he told me, the citys entire civil-service commission was abruptly fired without explanation; his sources told him something fishy was going on, but he knew hed never be able to run down the story. He shut down Project Thunderdome, parted ways with Paton, and placed all of Aldens newspapers on the auction block. Earnest and unpolished, with a perpetually mussed mop of hair, Bainum presented himself as a contrast to the cutthroat capitalists at Alden. Stewart Bainum, since losing his bid for the Sun, has been quietly working on a new venture. Updated May 21, 2021 at 2:13 PM ET. Knight began selling off its Alden holdings in 2012, and got completely out in 2014. John Temple: My newspaper died 10 years ago. To David Simon, the whimpering end of The Baltimore Sun feels both inevitable and infuriating. 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. Those that have survived are smaller, weaker, and more vulnerable to acquisition. [4], Alden purchased a 5.9-percent stake in Lee Enterprises in January 2020. Most responded with variations on the same question: Which recent stories from your newspapers have you especially appreciated? . Caleb will later recall, in an interview with D Magazine, asking his dad why he works so hard. The Tribune Tower rises above the streets of downtown Chicago in a majestic snarl of . You could look to Oakland, California, where the East Bay Times laid off 20 people one week after the paper won a Pulitzer. 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 . Alden is not a newspaper company, says Ann Marie Lipinski, a former editor in chief of the Chicago Tribune. A native of Vallejo, he was proud to work for his hometown paper. Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that owns The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press in Virginia, has proposed purchasing Lee Enterprises, the Iowa-based owner of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and most other major Virginia newspapers, for approximately $144 million, Alden announced Monday. They had a father-figure relationship, one told me. When the sale failed to attract a sufficiently high offer, Freeman turned his attention to squeezing as much cash out of the newspapers as possible. 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. [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. And when Chicago suffered a brutal summer crime wave, the paper had no one on the night shift to listen to the police scanner. Instead, they gutted the place. But within weeks, Bainum said, Alden tried to tack on a five-year licensing deal that would have cost him tens of millions more. Some expressed exasperation with the staff of the Chicago Tribune, who were unable to find a single interested local buyer. With his own money, he helps his brother launch the New York Press, a free alt-weekly in Manhattan. The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. It played with my mind a little bit, Glidden told me. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital is attempting to acquire Davenport-based Lee Enterprises, one of the country's largest newspaper chains, in all the markings of a hostile takeover. Aldens calculus was simple. "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 . But if you really started fucking up in grandiose and belligerent ways, if you started stealing and grifting and lying, eventually somebody would come up behind you and say, Youre grifting and youre lying and theyd put it in the paper., The bad stuff runs for so long now, he went on, that by the time you get to it, institutions are irreparable, or damn near close., Take away the newsroom packed with meddling reporters, and a city loses a crucial layer of accountability. The pitch had a certain romantic appeal to the reporters in the room. [11], In November 2021, Alden Global Capital made an offer to purchase Lee Enterprises for $24 a share in cash, or about $141 million. "[28], In mid-February 2022, the Delaware court found in favor of Lee Enterprises. When I asked Freeman what he thought was broken about the newspaper industry, he launched into a monologue that was laden with jargon and light on insightsummarizing what has been the conventional wisdom for a decade as though it were Aldens discovery. This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog. 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. The firm oversaw the promotion of John Paton, a charismatic digital-media evangelist, who improved the papers web and mobile offerings and increased online ad revenue. The Ubiquity - The student news site of Quartz Hill High School Unless the Tribunes trajectory changes, Chicago may soon provide a grim case study. 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." On the surface, the answer might seem obvious.