what newspapers does alden global capital own
Others pointed to Bainums financing partner, who pulled out of the deal at the 11th hour. Tribune Publishing last month approved a $630m takeover deal with Alden Global Capital. About a month after The Baltimore Sun was acquired by Alden, a senior editor at the paper took questions from anxious reporters on Zoom. When the journalists created a Slack channel to coordinate their efforts across multiple newspapers, they dubbed it Project Mayhem.. "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 . 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. He stops talking to the press, refuses to be photographed, and rarely appears in public. They are also defined by an obsessive secrecy. Smith began investing in newspapers and media around the same time. The most promising prospect materialized in Baltimore, where a hotel magnate named Stewart Bainum Jr. expressed interest in the Sun. Media . Maybe theyd cancel their subscriptions eventually; maybe the papers would fold altogether. His editor cited a supposed journalistic infraction (Glidden had reported the resignation of a school superintendent before an agreed-upon embargo). The families that used to own the bulk of Americas local newspapersthe Bonfilses of Denver, the Chandlers of Los Angeleswere never perfect stewards. Freeman was more animated when he turned to the prospect of extracting money from Big Tech. 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. Youd be surprised. 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. [21], Under the acquisition plan, MediaNews Group debt fell to $165 million from about $930 million. But Glidden felt sure he knew the real reason: Alden wanted him gone. That gave the journalists at the Sun a brief window to stop the sale from going through. I sort of bully people around to get stuff done, he boasted to The Washington Post in 1985. [2][3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. and our desire to support local newspapers over the long term." Alden said it wants to work Lee's board of . Alden Global Capital swallowed all of the Tribune's newspapers, including the New York Daily News, earlier in 2021. How exactly Randall Smith chose Heath Freeman as his protg is a matter of speculation among those who have worked for the two of them. She was writing about Aldens growing newspaper empire, and wanted to know what it was like to be the last news reporter in town. [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. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. But maybe the clearest illustration is in Vallejo, California, a city of about 120,000 people 30 miles north of San Francisco. Nov. 22, 2021. The men who devised this model are Randall Smith and Heath Freeman, the co-founders of Alden Global Capital. . Heath hopes the well never runs dry, but hes going to keep pumping until it does. 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. California biotech billionaire and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns 24%, He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. Theres no industry that I can think of more integral to a working democracy than the local-news business, he said. It's newspaper-endorsement season again, and that means it's Should newspapers do endorsements?season again. My request for an interview with Smith was dismissed by his spokesperson before I finished asking. Alden is known for . I asked, What is the Foundations perspective on those investments now, as news of Aldens gutting of these newspapers has come to light?. 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. This is the story weve been telling for decades about the dying local-news industry, and its not without truth. 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. Alden began its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in 2019, when they paid $117.9 million to Michael Ferro for his 25.2-percent stake. Maybe this obscure hedge fund had a plan. It feels like were going up against capitalism now, Lillian Reed, the reporter who helped launch the Save Our Sun campaign, told me. "[28], In mid-February 2022, the Delaware court found in favor of Lee Enterprises. The newsroom was moved to a single room rented from the local chamber of commerce. Since they bought their first newspapers a decade ago, no one has been more mercenary or less interested in pretending to care about their publications long-term health. Freemans father, Brian, was a successful investment banker who specialized in making deals on behalf of labor unions. Smith, a reclusive Palm Beach septuagenarian, hasnt granted a press interview since the 1980s. Alden Global Capital already owns 200 publications and a 6% stake in Lee Enterprises. 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. But for all the theatrics, his marching orders were always the same: Cut more. Next up: Chicago, Baltimore, and the New York Daily News. 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. He says he visited the Tribune's office and was "really shocked by how grim the scene was." The Tribune had been profitable when Alden took over. How do you know who wins? the boy asks. The editor in chief mysteriously resigned, and managers scrambled to deal with the cuts. Glidden had heard rumblings about the papers owners when he first took the job, but he hadnt paid much attention. When John Glidden first joined the Vallejo Times-Herald, in 2014, it had a staff of about a dozen reporters, editors, and photographers. Reading these stories now has a certain horror-movie quality: You want to somehow warn the unwitting victims of whats about to happen. A month after he started, one of his fellow reporters left and Glidden was asked to start covering schools in addition to his other responsibilities. But a sense of fatalism permeated the work. The movement gained traction in some markets, with local politicians and celebrities expressing solidarity. Ken Kelleher is an American sculptor. What happens next? Joe Pompeo pilloried Alden in Vanity Fair for reducing newsrooms. 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 . The hollowing-out of the Chicago Tribune was noted in the national press, of course. At the Pioneer Press , where its staff is down to 60, the paper produced a . Alden, a New York City-based firm that has become the grim reaper of American newspapers, had recently increased its stake in Tribune Publishing to 32%making it the largest shareholder of the . In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business. So far, Alden has limited its closures primarily to weekly newspapers, but Doctor argues its only a matter of time before the firm starts shutting down its dailies as well. Iowa-based Lee Enterprises asks investors to help fight off hedge fund Alden Global Capital. 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 . Some in the industry say they wouldnt be surprised if Smith and Freeman end up becoming the biggest newspaper moguls in U.S. history. Other large shareholders include Californian asset manager Capital Group and UK fund manager Jupiter Asset Management. If you want to know what its like when Alden Capital buys your local newspaper, you could look to Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where coverage of local elections in more than a dozen communities falls to a single reporter working out of his attic and emailing questionnaires to candidates. Former Knight-Ridder headquarters. 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. So I was more than a little shocked to learn that, according to its tax filings, Knight had invested $13 million with Aldens Distressed Opportunities Fund by 2010 and kept investing through 2014. After congratulating him on closing the deal, Bainum said he was still interested in buying the Sun if Alden was willing to negotiate. 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. Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns. Convinced that the Sun wont be able to provide the kind of coverage the city needs, he has set out to build a new publication of record from the ground up. Otherwise, youre just peeing in the ocean.. I asked. 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. Knight first reported its investment in Alden in 2010, noting the fair market value of its Alden holdings was $13.4 million. MediaNews Group came out of bankruptcy in March 2010 under the majority ownership of its lenders. In my many conversations with people who have worked with Freeman, not one could recall seeing him read a newspaper. From the March 1914 issue: H. L. Mencken on newspaper morals, A story circulated throughout the companypossibly apocryphal, though no one could say for surethat when Freeman was informed that The Denver Post had won a Pulitzer in 2013, his first response was: Does that come with any money?. Well, that wasnt the point. On Monday, Dail A native of Vallejo, he was proud to work for his hometown paper. The Denver Post has become the face of this struggle, due to an editorial published in its own pages lashing out against owners, New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital. Many in the journalism industry, watching lawsuits play out in Australia and Europe, have held out hope in recent years that Google and Facebook will be compelled to share their advertising revenue with the local outlets whose content populates their platforms. Connecting this to the current state of American newspaper ownership seems rather tenuous.. These include the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and The Baltimore Sun. They were very tight. Freeman has resisted elaborating on his relationship with Smith, saying simply that they were family friends before going into business together. Lee's board of directors . It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. MNG Enterprises, Inc., doing business as Digital First Media and MediaNews Group, is a Denver, Colorado -based newspaper publisher owned by Alden Global Capital. 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. But he couldnt help feeling that the police scandal would have been exposed much sooner if the Sun were operating at full force. 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. Meanwhile, in Vallejo, John Glidden went from covering crime and community news to holding the title of the only hard news reporter in town, filling a legal pad with tips he knew he'd never have time to pursue. 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. It will rely initially on philanthropic donations, but he aims to sell enough subscriptions to make it self-sustaining within five years. 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. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. 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.). He was fired after criticizing Alden in a Washington Post interview. What most concerns him is how his city will manage without a robust paper keeping tabs on the people in charge. 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. 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. 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.