He took particular pride in finding novel ways to give away his family fortune, funding child-poverty initiatives in Baltimore and prenatal care for women in Liberia. Feeling burned by the hedge fund, Bainum decided to make a last-minute bid for all of Tribune Publishings newspapers, pledging to line up responsible buyers in each market. It emphasizes supporting the emergence of new, sustainable models for local news, through both grantmaking and research, Sherry told me, including grant programs for nonprofit news organizations. In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business. When he did, he exhibited a casual contempt for the journalists who worked there. 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. City budgets balloon, along with corruption and dysfunction. John Temple: My newspaper died 10 years ago. In my many conversations with people who have worked with Freeman, not one could recall seeing him read a newspaper. Some expressed exasperation with the staff of the Chicago Tribune, who were unable to find a single interested local buyer. When Alden first got into the news business, Freeman seemed willing to indulge some innovation. 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. Some have even suggested that this represents Americas last chance to save its local-news industry. The California Public Employees Retirement System, a few European banks, and Citigroup and Coca Cola Companys pension funds have all invested in Alden, along with charities such as the Circle of Service Foundation and the Alfred University Endowment. The papers printing was moved to a plant more than 100 miles outside town, Glidden told me, which meant that the news arriving on subscribers doorsteps each morning was often more than 24 hours old. Yes, today, it's a newspaper without a newsroom. In 2016 (year of the most recent 990 available), the foundation invested $17 million in Alden funds. A quarter of the newsroom (including many big-name reporters, columnists and photographers) took the buyouts Alden offered, and while some great reporters remain on staff, it's nearly impossible for them to fill those gaps, Coppins says. 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. "[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. It hurts to see the paper like this, he told her. . But the group that jumps out to me on the list is the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 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. The $633 million sale made Alden the nation's second largest newspaper owner in terms of circulation, with more than 200 newspapers. He quotes H. L. Mencken, the papers crusading 20th-century columnist, on the joys of journalism: It is really the life of kings.
Is this company saving newspapers or profiting from their demise? - The By Julie Reynolds. 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. I put the question to Freeman, but he declined to answer on the record. Aldens calculus was simple. Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that Alden-owned newspapers have cut their staff at twice the rate of their competitors; not coincidentally, circulation has fallen faster too, according to Ken Doctor, a news-industry analyst who reviewed data from some of the papers. But beneath all the recriminations and infighting was a cruel reality: When faced with the likely decimation of the countrys largest local newspapers, most Americans didnt seem to care very much. Vallejo deserves better. A few weeks after the story came out, he was fired.
Alden Global Capital moves to buy Lee Enterprises, owner of the St Module 5- Journalism.pdf - Journalism Modules - The 5 Ws 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. On . Coordinated by .
Alden Global Capital is buying and gutting local newspapers : NPR - NPR.org 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. A search through nonprofit groups publicly available financial reports, commonly known as Form 990s, reveals that all kinds of organizations some surprising have invested their monies with Alden over the years. A more honest argument might have claimed, as some economists have, that vulture funds like Alden play a useful role in creative destruction, dismantling outmoded businesses to make room for more innovative insurgents. Alden currently owns 32%. Collectively, they control about one-half of daily newspapers in the U.S. Lee's board of directors . Alden, which already owned one-third of . 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. Stewart Bainum, since losing his bid for the Sun, has been quietly working on a new venture. Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises is asking its shareholders to help it fight off a hostile takeover . One known investor, however, is the Randall and Barbara Smith Foundation, named for Alden founder Smith and his wife. In the for-profit news arena, Knight is spurring the digital transformation of local newsrooms through the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, Sherry said. 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. 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. Alden Global Capital swallowed all of the Tribune's newspapers, including the New York Daily News, earlier in 2021. 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. My request for an interview with Smith was dismissed by his spokesperson before I finished asking. By 2011, when Aldens Distressed Opportunities Fund lost more than 20 percent of its value, Knights holdings in the fund were valued at $10.7 million. The paper had weathered a decade and a half of mismanagement and declining revenues and layoffs, and had finally achieved a kind of stability. Or to Denver, where the Posts staff was cut by two-thirds, evicted from its newsroom, and relocated to a plant in an area with poor air quality, where some employees developed breathing problems. The one central theme, the Times reports, seems to be that Smith and its web of affiliates are out, first and foremost, for themselves. If this reputation bothers Randy and his colleagues, they dont let on: For a while, according to The Village Voice, his firm proudly hangs a painting of a vulture in its lobby. Alden gradually took control of the papers that would become DFM. In a news release Monday, Alden said it sent Lee's board a letter with the offer. It has not, however, retained the Chicago Tribune. 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. The 1% own and operate the . Instead, the money was used to finance the hedge funds other ventures. Tribune Publishing last month approved a $630m takeover deal with Alden Global Capital. Alden is known for . It feels like were going up against capitalism now, Lillian Reed, the reporter who helped launch the Save Our Sun campaign, told me. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith.
Live news: US manufacturing sector contracts for fourth straight month [4], Alden purchased a 5.9-percent stake in Lee Enterprises in January 2020. When the city-hall reporter left a few months later, he picked up that beat too. 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. 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. 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. He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. [32], The company has been criticized for investing money for pensions of newspaper employees in funds it manages itself. They are also defined by an obsessive secrecy. Knight began selling off its Alden holdings in 2012, and got completely out in 2014. 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. Unless the Tribunes trajectory changes, Chicago may soon provide a grim case study. At the Suns peak, it employed more than 400 journalists, with reporters in London and Tokyo and Jerusalem. The men who devised this model are Randall Smith and Heath Freeman, the co-founders of Alden Global Capital. The Ubiquity - The student news site of Quartz Hill High School Reporters kept reporting, and editors kept editing, and the union kept looking for ways to put pressure on Alden. At their worst, they used their papers to maintain oppressive social hierarchies.
Hedge fund Alden Global Capital in hunt for big newspaper chain Lee Others pointed to Bainums financing partner, who pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour. He used his own money to pull court records, and went years without going on a vacation. Before our interview, Id contacted a number of Aldens reporters to find out what they would ask their boss if they ever had the chance. No response came back. AP. It has figured out how to make a profit by driving newspapers into the ground, he says, since Alden's aim is not to make them into long-term sustainable businesses but rather maximize profits quickly to show it has made a winning investment. Hes acutely aware of the risksI may end up with egg on my face, he saidbut he believes its worth trying to develop a successful model that could be replicated in other markets. Lee Enterprises owns 77 daily newspapers, including the Buffalo News, Omaha World-Herald and the Tulsa World. Gerry Smith.
Denver Post reporters vs 'vulture capitalist' hedge fund Alden - CNBC But most of them also had a stake in the communities their papers served, which meant that, if nothing else, their egos were wrapped up in putting out a respectable product. 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. 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. It is a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital, the New York City hedge fund that backed the purchase of and dramatic cost-cutting at more than 100 newspapers causing more than 1,000 lost jobs. Today, half of all daily newspapers in the U.S. are controlled by financial firms, according to an analysis by the Financial Times, and the number is almost certain to grow.
The vulture is hungry again: Alden Global Capital wants to buy a few Three days later, Bainumstill smarting from his experience with Alden, but worried about the Suns fatesent a pride-swallowing email to Freeman. Tips that he would never have time to investigate piled up on a legal pad he kept at his desk. Former Knight-Ridder headquarters. Meanwhile, the Tribunes remaining staff, which had been spread thin even before Alden came along, struggled to perform the newspapers most basic functions. A native of Vallejo, he was proud to work for his hometown paper. 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. 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. but sadly on a global scale there is hardly any independent news sources left currently.
Tampa Bay Times sells printing plant to developer for $21 million [8][24] Tribune Publishing publishes nine major metropolitan dailies. So who is investing with them? When Simon called me, he was on the set of his new miniseries, We Own This City, which tells the true story of Baltimore cops who spent years running their own drug ring from inside the police department. Already the largest shareholder . Heath Freeman in an undated photo provided by Goldin Solutions . he asks. A vulture doesnt hold a wounded animals head underwater. "[28], In mid-February 2022, the Delaware court found in favor of Lee Enterprises.
NY Daily News owner Alden sues Lee after publisher rejects takeover bid Hedge fund Alden's bid for owner of Virginian-Pilot, Daily Press The audio for this interview was produced by Ryan Benk and edited by Scott Saloway. But while its true that Alden entered the industry by purchasing floundering newspapers, not all of them were necessarily doomed to liquidation. Alden is in the business of making money, not journalism. 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. by Magnus Shaw..An enormous advertising company (Leo Burnett) and a small creative film company (Asylum) have had a difficult couple of weeks. What most concerns him is how his city will manage without a robust paper keeping tabs on the people in charge. 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. [10][19][20], The company has its origins in R.D. 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%. [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. Feb. 16, 2021 8:04 PM PT. Through it all, the owners maintained their ruthless silencespurning interview requests and declining to articulate their plans for the paper. Alden completed its takeover of the Tribune papers in May. 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. For Smith, the Palm Beach conservative and Trump ally, sticking it to the mainstream media might actually be a perk of Aldens strategy. How do you know who wins? the boy asks. He shut down Project Thunderdome, parted ways with Paton, and placed all of Aldens newspapers on the auction block. My answer is its hard to know. "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?" The story of Alden Capital begins on the set of a 1960s TV game show called Dream House.
Newspapers Have Been Struggling And Then Came The Pandemic - Forbes It seemed reasonable to ask that they answer a few questions. Even as Aldens portfolio grew, Freeman rarely visited his newspapers. Layout design was outsourced to freelancers in the Philippines. The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. Reinventing their papers could require years of false starts and fine-tuningand, most important, a delayed payday for Aldens investors. 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?. When a reporter asked if their work was still valued, the editor sounded deflated. When it was over, a quarter of the newsroom was gone. 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 . 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 Hedge Fund Vampire That Bleeds Newspapers Dry Now Has the . Other records turned up from public pension funds and filings of publicly traded companies. In May 2021, Tribune Publishing finalized its sale to Alden, after having announced in February 2021 that it intended to pursue this path. It felt important.
We were like, Theyre not going to take our newspaper from us! It has filed a lawsuit in its bid to buy out news publisher Lee Enterprises. Misinformation proliferates. As a privately held hedge fund, Alden doesnt have to reveal much to the public. (Freeman denied this characterization through a spokesperson. about two hundred American newspapers. 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. 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. 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..
Alden Global Capital, the Hedge Fund Killing Newspapers - The Atlantic After a long walk down a windowless hallway lined with cinder-block walls, I got in an elevator, which deposited me near a modest bank of desks near the printing press. 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.). Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. Heath Freeman, president of Alden Global Capital, is known for pushing big cost reductions, which he says help to save newspapers.
Fears for future of American journalism as hedge funds flex power They want to know who exactly profits when we learn, as Harvard Nieman Lab's Ken Doctor recently reported, that the firm netted $160 million last year from its Digital First Media . Aldens Distressed Opportunities Fund was launched in 2008 and saw astounding success in its first few months, showing returns of more than 30 percent a big rescue for Alden, whose investments in Russia the year before had lost more than 61 percent of their value. This summer, Alden Global Capital acquired Tribune Publishing and its titles, from small community newspapers to major metro titles like its flagship, The Chicago Tribune, and The Baltimore Sun. Here was one of Americas most storied newspapersa publication that had endorsed Abraham Lincoln and scooped the Treaty of Versailles, that had toppled political bosses and tangled with crooked mayors and collected dozens of Pulitzer Prizesreduced to a newsroom the size of a Chipotle. Freeman never responded. After college he worked at Hudson Studio, Art Foundry in Niverville, NY . Earnest and unpolished, with a perpetually mussed mop of hair, Bainum presented himself as a contrast to the cutthroat capitalists at Alden. The details of how Smith got to know him are opaque, but the resulting loyalty was evident. 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. I asked Knight about those investments and whether the Foundations officers had any regrets, knowing what we now do about Aldens devastating effect on its own newspapers. 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. Alden's holdings already spanned the country, including the .
Daily News spinoff stirs anxiety after Alden takeover - New York Post He can cite decades-old scoops and tell you whom they pissed off. Below are highlights from his conversation with Morning Edition's A Martnez. For Baltimore to avoid a similar fate, Simon told me, something new would have to come alonga spiritual heir to the Sun: A newspaper is its contents and the people who make it.
Tribune Sale to Alden Approved by Shareholders - The New York Times Hedge fund Alden in hunt for another big newspaper chain - WKMG 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. But outside the industry, few seemed to notice. They could be vain, bumbling, even corrupt. . It wasn't the first newspaper acquisition for this hedge fund firm, nor is it the only firm of its kind eyeing the nation's newspapers. 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. But in the case of local news, nothing comparable is ready to replace these papers when they die. Maybe theyd cancel their subscriptions eventually; maybe the papers would fold altogether.
Alden Global Capital aims to buy Lee Enterprises | The Gazette Theyre being targeted by investors who have figured out how to get rich by strip-mining local-news outfits. He said that he still appreciated their journalism, but that he couldnt speak for his corporate bosses. Next year, Bainum will launch The Baltimore Banner, an all-digital, nonprofit news outlet. Hes impressed by their journalism, he told me, but his clearest takeaway is that theyre not nearly well funded enough. So why be surprised that Knight-Ridder or anyone else is investing in destructive but profitable ventures? 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. Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. 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.. 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. [14], Alden has a reputation for sharply cutting costs by reducing the number of journalists working on its newspapers. What threatens local newspapers now is not just digital disruption or abstract market forces.
Hedge fund Alden Global is buying newspaper chain Tribune Publishing That's because the fund is stepping in to buy and then gut newsrooms across the country. When plans for the building were announced in 1922, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, the longtime owner of the Chicago Tribune, said he wanted to erect the worlds most beautiful office building for his beloved newspaper. Inside Alden Global Capital. [21], Under the acquisition plan, MediaNews Group debt fell to $165 million from about $930 million. 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.
You can bypass most soft paywalls with a little CSS knowledge The shadow of hedge fund and corporate ownership leaves newsrooms in