Hes impressed by their journalism, he told me, but his clearest takeaway is that theyre not nearly well funded enough. 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. "[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. All good works, and Knight is to be commended for them. Some publications, such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, have developed successful long-term models that Aldens papers might try to follow. The endorsement debate swings around again - Columbia Journalism Review . Russ Smith is a puckish libertarian whose self-described contempt for the journalistic class animates the pages of the publication. Alden Global Capital has currently bid to buy all of Tribune. 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. 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. He says he visited the Tribune's office and was "really shocked by how grim the scene was." In a press release Monday, Nov. 22, 2021 Alden said it sent Lee's board a letter with the offer. Hellman and BNP together own 46.4 per cent of Allfunds' shares. 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.. Stewart Bainum, since losing his bid for the Sun, has been quietly working on a new venture. Alden Global Capital seeks to buy Lee Enterprises for $144M The scene was somehow even grimmer than Id imagined. 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. Morale tanked; reporters burned out. Hedge fund Alden Global is buying newspaper chain Tribune Publishing Alden Global Capital Is Killing the Newsroom - Common Dreams [2] Its managing director is Heath Freeman. He had spoken on this issue before, and it was easy to see why. One researcher tells me that if that money were invested in the S&P 500 Index Fund, it would have earned roughly $11 million over the same period. Of course, its easy to romanticize past eras of journalism. After college he worked at Hudson Studio, Art Foundry in Niverville, NY . 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. Tribune shareholders approve takeover by Alden Global Capital 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. In the for-profit news arena, Knight is spurring the digital transformation of local newsrooms through the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, Sherry said. 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. Tips that he would never have time to investigate piled up on a legal pad he kept at his desk. 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. 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. Reading these stories now has a certain horror-movie quality: You want to somehow warn the unwitting victims of whats about to happen. 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. The model is simple: Gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring as much cash as possible out of the enterprise until eventually enough readers cancel their subscriptions that the paper folds, or is reduced to a desiccated husk of its former self. It was all about the next quarters profit margins, says Matt DeRienzo, who worked as a publisher for Aldens Connecticut newspapers before finally resigning. 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 . hide caption. Clearly, for Smith and Freeman, chop-shopping their newspapers paid off. Meanwhile, the Tribunes remaining staff, which had been spread thin even before Alden came along, struggled to perform the newspapers most basic functions. When he did, he exhibited a casual contempt for the journalists who worked there. Its the meanness and the elegance of the capitalist marketplace brought to newspapers, Doctor told me. For Freeman, newspapers are financial assets and nothing morenumbers to be rearranged on spreadsheets until they produce the maximum returns for investors. [2] [3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. Newspapers Affect Us, Often In Ways We Don't Realize, 'Project Mayhem': Reporters Race To Save Tribune Papers From 'Vulture' Fund. Maybe this obscure hedge fund had a plan. If they did it right, Venetoulis said, they just might be able to line up a local, civic-minded owner for the paper. 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. 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. Around this time, Randy becomes preoccupied with privacy. Another ex-publisher told me Freeman believed that local newspapers should be treated like any other commodity in an extractive business. Well, he told me, they have some very good reporters., This article appears in the November 2021 print edition with the headline The Men Who Are Killing Americas Newspapers., A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms, I Dont Know That I Would Even Call It Meth Anymore, W. G. Sebald Ransacked Jewish Lives for His Fictions. 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. [30], Alden Global Capital includes a real estate division called Twenty Lake Holdings, which primarily buys excess real estate from newspapers. But in the case of local news, nothing comparable is ready to replace these papers when they die. . When a reporter asked if their work was still valued, the editor sounded deflated. In early 2011, Alden was still considered a non-controlling investor, but by the end of the year, that would change. 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. The 21st century has seen many of these generational owners flee the industry, to devastating effect. A reporter at one of his newspapers suggested I try doorstepping Smithshowing up at his home unannounced to ask questions from the porch. Other large shareholders include Californian asset manager Capital Group and UK fund manager Jupiter Asset Management. . Spend some time around the shell-shocked journalists at the Tribune these days, and youll hear the same question over and over: How did it come to this? According to its 990s, Knight ended up making $185,000 over five years on its initial $13.4 million investment. 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. . Alden Global Capital - Wikipedia Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund that this year became the second largest newspaper publisher in the United States, has made an offer to purchase Lee Enterprises, the media company that owns 75 daily newspapers, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 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 . This is predatory.. I would know he didnt mean it, and he would know he didnt mean it, but he would at least go through the motions. * Edited from 'independent . Longtime Tribune staffers had seen their share of bad corporate overlords, but this felt more calculated, more sinister. Theres no industry that I can think of more integral to a working democracy than the local-news business, he said. [4], Alden purchased a 5.9-percent stake in Lee Enterprises in January 2020. 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. The purchase represents the culmination of Alden's years-long drive to take over the company and its storied titles . Margaret Sullivan: The Constitution doesnt work without local news. I knew they almost never talked to reporters, but Randall Smith and Heath Freeman were now two of the most powerful figures in the news industry, and theyd gotten there by dismantling local journalism. Freemans father, Brian, was a successful investment banker who specialized in making deals on behalf of labor unions. But there are some clues here and there. Next year, Bainum will launch The Baltimore Banner, an all-digital, nonprofit news outlet. A spokesman took issue with the entirety of the story, and laid out a long list of questions attacking the integrity of the reporter, The Atlantic and some of his sources without addressing some of the more specific claims within the report. Alden completed its takeover of the Tribune papers in May. When it was over, a quarter of the newsroom was gone. Its not the name or the flag., He may get his wish. 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. The largest share of the blame was assigned to the Tribune board for allowing the sale to Alden to go through. 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. Who is investor Randall Smith and why is he buying up newspaper companies, deep losses to Alden funds overall values, Denver Post newsroom workers invoke Thirst Amendment to raise awareness about conditions under Alden, Pittsburgh newspaper workers are making history, The NewsGuild urges public pension funds to divest from Cerberus, NewsGuild to Lee Shareholders: Reject Aldens Vote No Campaign. By the charitys own accounting, it lost $ 2.3 million in book value on a $17 million investment that year. It has filed a lawsuit in its bid to buy out news publisher Lee Enterprises. 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. When the Chicago Tribune held a Save Local News rally, most of the people who showed up were members of the media. If you went into a lab to create the perfect bro, Heath would be that creation, says one former executive at an Alden-owned company, who, like others in this story, requested anonymity to speak candidly. What Alden's potential acquisition of Lee Enterprises means for 20-plus "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?" Some in the industry say they wouldnt be surprised if Smith and Freeman end up becoming the biggest newspaper moguls in U.S. history. Scott Olson/Getty Images he asks. But a sense of fatalism permeated the work. Shortly after the Tribune deal closed earlier this year, I began trying to interview the men behind Alden Capital. Am I going to win against capitalism in America? Alden Global Capital moves to buy Lee Enterprises, owner of the St [8][24] Tribune Publishing publishes nine major metropolitan dailies. And everyone knows its going to run dry.. And two, by at least 2013, those of us who worked at Alden-controlled papers (like me) were already experiencing the slashing and burning. [4][13], In November 2021, Alden made an offer to Lee to purchase the company in its entirety for roughly $141 million. Soon, Tribune-owned newsrooms across the country were kicking off similar campaigns. Daily News spinoff stirs anxiety after Alden takeover - New York Post Tampa Bay Times sells printing plant to developer for $21 million There were sober op-eds and lamentations on Twitter and expressions of disappointment by professors of journalism. Located in the same Manhattan office building as Alden, it funds stem-cell research, health-related charities, arts and culture and Duke University, alma mater of Smiths protg Heath Freeman. Tribune Publishing last month approved a $630m takeover deal with Alden Global Capital. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. At their worst, they used their papers to maintain oppressive social hierarchies. 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. 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. 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. 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. [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. That might sound like a losing formula, but these papers dont have to become sustainable businesses for Smith and Freeman to make money. Smith began investing in newspapers and media around the same time. It makes me profoundly sad to think about what the Trib was, what it is, and what its likely to become, says David Axelrod, who was a reporter at the paper before becoming an adviser to Barack Obama. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital in hunt for Lee Enterprises newspaper Heath Freeman in an undated photo provided by Goldin Solutions . He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. What happens next? 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. NPR reached out to Alden for a response. With his own money, he helps his brother launch the New York Press, a free alt-weekly in Manhattan. He wrote, "Alden Global Capital has eliminated the jobs of scores of reporters and editors, and decimated journalism in cities all over the country: Denver, Boston, San Jose, Trenton, etc. 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 . Alden Global Capital swallowed all of the Tribune's newspapers, including the New York Daily News, earlier in 2021. He shut down Project Thunderdome, parted ways with Paton, and placed all of Aldens newspapers on the auction block. The company has been growing its portfolio and as of May 2021, owns over 100 newspapers and 200 assorted other publications. Alden, which already owned one-third of . The Tribune Company (which owns the newspapers mentioned above) was still turning a profit when Alden bought it, but the hedge fund immediately offered aggressive rounds of buyouts and shrunk its newsrooms in the name of increasing profit margins. Alden currently owns 32%. 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 . 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. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith. "[26] Shortly thereafter, Alden Global, through its operating unit Strategic Investment Opportunities, filed a lawsuit in state court in Delaware against Lee Enterprises. It felt important. 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. Meanwhile, with few newsroom jobs left to eliminate, Alden continued to find creative ways to cut costs. Through it all, the owners maintained their ruthless silencespurning interview requests and declining to articulate their plans for the paper. But that's not true for all of them. [10][19][20], The company has its origins in R.D. It's a tangled tale but essentially Asylum produced a film for the McDonald's charitable foundation for Leo. It's traded in a prestigious downtown newsroom for a "Chipotle-sized office" near the printing press. On . About a month after The Baltimore Sun was acquired by Alden, a senior editor at the paper took questions from anxious reporters on Zoom. What threatens local newspapers now is not just digital disruption or abstract market forces. 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. [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. Knight spokesman Andrew Sherry declined to answer any of those questions, saying instead, Our endowment investments support our grantmaking., We invested approximately one half of one percent of our endowment in an Alden fund between late 2009 and early 2014, he said via email. Theres little evidence that Alden cares about the sustainability of its newspapers. MediaNews Group came out of bankruptcy in March 2010 under the majority ownership of its lenders. It was clear that they didnt care about this being a business in the future. City budgets balloon, along with corruption and dysfunction. The best architects of the era were invited to submit designs; lofty quotes about the Fourth Estate were selected to adorn the lobby. (Freeman has, in the past, disputed Bainums account of the negotiations.) Frustrated and worn out, Glidden broke down one day last spring when a reporter from The Washington Post called. 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. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. 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. A native of Vallejo, he was proud to work for his hometown paper. Alden Launches $142 Million Bid for Publisher Lee Enterprises Instead, they gutted the place. 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 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. Heath hopes the well never runs dry, but hes going to keep pumping until it does. Hedge fund known for cutting journalism jobs is seeking to buy - CNN 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. 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. Alden Global Capital is buying and gutting local newspapers : NPR - NPR.org 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.
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