Knight began selling off its Alden holdings in 2012, and got completely out in 2014. Who Profits From Alden Global Capital? 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 shadow of hedge fund and corporate ownership leaves newsrooms in The purchase represents the culmination of Alden's years-long drive to take over the company and its storied titles . . As a privately held hedge fund, Alden doesnt have to reveal much to the public. He writes a weekly column called Mugger that savages the citys journalists by name and frequently runs to 10,000 words. Digital First Media - Wikipedia I asked if anyone there at the time was aware of Aldens vulture business strategy. This investment strategy does not come without social consequences. That's because the fund is stepping in to buy and then gut newsrooms across the country. 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?. 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. Now it might be facing extinction. Bainum envisioned rebuilding the paperwhich, by 2020, was down to a single full-time statehouse reporteras a nonprofit. 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. So who is investing with them? That may well be the future of local news, he says. (Freeman denied this through a spokesperson.) Probably not.. Most responded with variations on the same question: Which recent stories from your newspapers have you especially appreciated? Meet the Hedge Fund Boss Who Just Bought Tribune's Newspapers That gave the journalists at the Sun a brief window to stop the sale from going through. 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 . It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith. They could be vain, bumbling, even corrupt. G ARY MARX and David Jackson, two veteran investigative reporters at the Chicago Tribune, spent most of last year seeking potential buyers who might save their newspaper from Alden Global Capital . How Alden Global Capital will make money owning Tribune Publishing 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 . Its a game, Randy explains to his son. At the time, finalternatives.com reported that the Global Distress Opportunities fund would focus on financial firms as well as homebuilding, gaming and auto-related names.. [6][7][8][9], The company operates its media holdings through Digital First Media (DFM), which it acquired in 2010 after DMG's parent company, MediaNews Group, declared bankruptcy. '60 Minutes' correspondent Jon Wertheim on local newspapers - Poynter At the Suns peak, it employed more than 400 journalists, with reporters in London and Tokyo and Jerusalem. 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. 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). They had a father-figure relationship, one told me. Meanwhile, the Tribunes remaining staff, which had been spread thin even before Alden came along, struggled to perform the newspapers most basic functions. Alden Global Capital, the Hedge Fund Killing Newspapers - The Atlantic 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. 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. Ken Kelleher - Creative Director / Artist - LinkedIn This is predatory.. But I had underestimated how little Aldens founders care about their standing in the journalism world. 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. ), Crucially, the profits generated by Aldens newspapers did not go toward rebuilding newsrooms. 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. 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. Am I going to win against capitalism in America? When the Smiths win, they pass on the house and take the cash prize insteada $20,000 haul that Randy will eventually use to seed a small trading firm he calls R.D. 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. There were sober op-eds and lamentations on Twitter and expressions of disappointment by professors of journalism. Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises is asking its shareholders to help it fight off a hostile takeover . As the months passed, things kept getting worse. [4][13], In November 2021, Alden made an offer to Lee to purchase the company in its entirety for roughly $141 million. The Tribune Tower, the iconic former home of the Chicago Tribune, seen in Chicago, Illinois in 2015. 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. 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 . The pay was terrible and the work was not glamorous, but Glidden loved his job. The Hedge Fund Vampire That Bleeds Newspapers Dry Now Has the [32], The company has been criticized for investing money for pensions of newspaper employees in funds it manages itself. Theres little evidence that Alden cares about the sustainability of its newspapers. Hedge fund Alden in hunt for another big newspaper chain 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 . The largest share of the blame was assigned to the Tribune board for allowing the sale to Alden to go through. I sort of bully people around to get stuff done, he boasted to The Washington Post in 1985. Much of the Knight family's once-grand newspaper empire was ultimately acquired by Alden Global Capital, while the family foundation invested in Alden funds. One conclusions even these reporters are hesitant to make is that we are all dealing within a capitalist system which has none, or few, principles to guide itself, apart from making a profit, no matter how. Opinions - Help yourself. Is it ever okay to nick an idea? 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. Alden's holdings already spanned the country, including the . The show draws from a book written by a Sun reporter, and Simon was quick to point out that the paper still has good journalists covering important stories. The men killing Americas newspapers, how Slack upended the workplace, and the new meth. The shows premise pits two couples against each other for the chance to win a home. In the for-profit news arena, Knight is spurring the digital transformation of local newsrooms through the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, Sherry said. It has not, however, retained the Chicago Tribune. Some have even suggested that this represents Americas last chance to save its local-news industry. about two hundred American newspapers. At one point, I tracked down the photographer whod taken the only existing picture of Smith on the internet. It is the nations second-largest newspaper owner by circulation. 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. "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 . Eventually he was the only news reporter left on staff, charged with covering the citys police, schools, government, courts, hospitals, and businesses. 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune Papers, Stop The Presses! The practical effect of the death of local journalism is that you get what weve had, he told me, which is a halcyon time for corruption and mismanagement and basically misrule.. But a sense of fatalism permeated the work. Others pointed to Bainums financing partner, who pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour. When he did, he exhibited a casual contempt for the journalists who worked there. When the journalists created a Slack channel to coordinate their efforts across multiple newspapers, they dubbed it Project Mayhem.. Tuesday, 23 November 2021 07:46 PM EST. "[17] and Vanity Fair dubbed Alden the "grim reaper of American newspapers. But whats happening in Chicago is different. "[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. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. He teaches his 8-year-old son, Caleb, to make trades on a Quotron computer, and imparts the value of delayed gratification by reportedly postponing his familys Christmas so that he can use all their available cash to buy stocks at lower prices in December. 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. So Freeman pivoted. Tribune Sale to Alden Approved by Shareholders - The New York Times . Alden Global Capital already owns 200 publications and a 6% stake in Lee Enterprises. A recent Financial Times analysis found that half of all daily newspapers in the U.S. are controlled by financial firms, and Coppins says that number is all but certain to keep growing. By the time the FBI caught them, in 2017, the conspiracy had resulted in one dead civilian and a rash of wrongful arrests and convictions. What exactly went wrong would become a point of bitter debate among the journalists involved in the campaigns. Alden began its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in 2019, when they paid $117.9 million to Michael Ferro for his 25.2-percent stake. 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. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital in hunt for Lee Enterprises newspaper These papers would have been liquidated if not for us stepping up.. What's in the fine print in Alden's offer to takeover Tribune? - The Margaret Sullivan: The Constitution doesnt work without local news. Hedge fund Alden in hunt for another big newspaper chain - WKMG He stops talking to the press, refuses to be photographed, and rarely appears in public. 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. He was fired after criticizing Alden in a Washington Post interview. You need real capital to move the needle, he told me. [10][19][20], The company has its origins in R.D. Already the largest shareholder . My request for an interview with Smith was dismissed by his spokesperson before I finished asking. Alden Launches $142 Million Bid for Publisher Lee Enterprises 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. 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. Aldens calculus was simple. Alden Global Capital - Wikipedia and our desire to support local newspapers over the long term." Alden said it wants to work Lee's board of . 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. It financed the deal with the help of Cerberusa private-equity firm that owned, among other businesses, the security company that trained Saudi operatives who participated in the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. By Julie Reynolds. 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. For Smith, the Palm Beach conservative and Trump ally, sticking it to the mainstream media might actually be a perk of Aldens strategy. With his own money, he helps his brother launch the New York Press, a free alt-weekly in Manhattan. 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. Meanwhile, reporters fanned out across their respective cities in search of benevolent rich people to buy their newspapers. What threatens local newspapers now is not just digital disruption or abstract market forces. [4][5] The company added more newspapers to its portfolio in May 2021 when it purchased Tribune Publishing and became the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States. But years later, when Randy relocates to Palm Beach and becomes a major donor to Donald Trumps presidential campaign, it will make a certain amount of sense that his earliest known media investment was conceived as a giant middle finger to the journalistic establishment. But that's not true for all of them. 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 . The Banner will launch with about 50 journalistsnot far from the size of the Sunand an ambitious mandate. Lee, which owns the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Omaha World-Herald and many other daily newspapers throughout the region, is staving off a takeover attempt by Alden Global Capital, a New-York .
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