what newspapers does alden global capital own what newspapers does alden global capital own

Alden Global Capital swallowed all of the Tribune's newspapers, including the New York Daily News, earlier in 2021. But a sense of fatalism permeated the work. These papers would have been liquidated if not for us stepping up.. To David Simon, the whimpering end of The Baltimore Sun feels both inevitable and infuriating. Former Knight-Ridder headquarters. The Tribune Tower, the iconic former home of the Chicago Tribune, seen in Chicago, Illinois in 2015. [8][24] Tribune Publishing publishes nine major metropolitan dailies. Reading these stories now has a certain horror-movie quality: You want to somehow warn the unwitting victims of whats about to happen. Some publications, such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, have developed successful long-term models that Aldens papers might try to follow. Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund known for gutting local newsrooms, is seeking to buy Lee Enterprises (LEE), a publicly traded company with a chain of daily newspapers and other publications . 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. And when Chicago suffered a brutal summer crime wave, the paper had no one on the night shift to listen to the police scanner. 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. She was writing about Aldens growing newspaper empire, and wanted to know what it was like to be the last news reporter in town. This is a subscription-based business.. Theyre being targeted by investors who have figured out how to get rich by strip-mining local-news outfits. Alden completed its takeover of the Tribune papers in May. 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. He said that he still appreciated their journalism, but that he couldnt speak for his corporate bosses. 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. The story of Alden Capital begins on the set of a 1960s TV game show called Dream House. His editor cited a supposed journalistic infraction (Glidden had reported the resignation of a school superintendent before an agreed-upon embargo). Hes impressed by their journalism, he told me, but his clearest takeaway is that theyre not nearly well funded enough. Hellman and BNP together own 46.4 per cent of Allfunds' shares. 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. The pitch had a certain romantic appeal to the reporters in the room. He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. I asked. The best architects of the era were invited to submit designs; lofty quotes about the Fourth Estate were selected to adorn the lobby. 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. 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. The hollowing-out of the Chicago Tribune was noted in the national press, of course. I put the question to Freeman, but he declined to answer on the record. More to the point, Tribune Publishingwhich represents a substantial portion of Aldens titleswas profitable at the time of the acquisition. 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, 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. Through it all, the owners maintained their ruthless silencespurning interview requests and declining to articulate their plans for the paper. Aldens website contains no information beyond the firms name, and its list of investors is kept strictly confidential. 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. [14], Alden has a reputation for sharply cutting costs by reducing the number of journalists working on its newspapers. My question was did Knight know what Alden was doing to newspapers when it invested with the hedge fund, and does it regret that investment now? That may well be the future of local news, he says. 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. They had a father-figure relationship, one told me. Earnest and unpolished, with a perpetually mussed mop of hair, Bainum presented himself as a contrast to the cutthroat capitalists at Alden. In legal filings, Alden has acknowledged diverting hundreds of millions of dollars from its newspapers into risky bets on commercial real estate, a bankrupt pharmacy chain, and Greek debt bonds. 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. Alden Global Capital already owns 200 publications and a 6% stake in Lee Enterprises. "A lot of cities almost operate with the assumption that there will be at least one local newspaper, in some cases several local newspapers, acting as a check on the authorities," he says. 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. . The New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital - known for slashing its newspapers' budgets to extract escalated profits - won shareholder approval Friday for its $633 million bid to acquire the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain.. [4], In 2019, Alden attempted, but failed at, a hostile takeover of Gannett. [21], Under the acquisition plan, MediaNews Group debt fell to $165 million from about $930 million. 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. As a privately held hedge fund, Alden doesnt have to reveal much to the public. 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. But that's not true for all of them. Interestingly, Smiths foundation didnt do well with its Alden investments in 2016. The Banner will launch with about 50 journalistsnot far from the size of the Sunand an ambitious mandate. It's traded in a prestigious downtown newsroom for a "Chipotle-sized office" near the printing press. 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. 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. 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 . The audio for this interview was produced by Ryan Benk and edited by Scott Saloway. Its not the name or the flag., He may get his wish. 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. People who know him described Freemanwith his shellacked curls, perma-stubble, and omnipresent smirkas the archetypal Wall Street frat boy. Now it might be facing extinction. 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. The shows premise pits two couples against each other for the chance to win a home. 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. 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. When a reporter asked if their work was still valued, the editor sounded deflated. After college he worked at Hudson Studio, Art Foundry in Niverville, NY . The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. 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. "[34], In October 2021, The Atlantic examined the impact of Alden's acquisition of the Chicago Tribune, noting that, "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. 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 . The purchase represents the culmination of Alden's years-long drive to take over the company and its storied titles . 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. 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. To industry observers, Aldens brazen model set it apart even from chains like Gannett, known for its aggressive cost-cutting. But outside the industry, few seemed to notice. In the for-profit news arena, Knight is spurring the digital transformation of local newsrooms through the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, Sherry said. One tagline he was considering was Marylands Best Newsroom., When I asked, half in jest, if he planned to raid the Sun to staff up, he responded with a muted grin. 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. ", "Hedge Fund Reaches a Deal to Buy Tribune Publishing", "Opinion - Will The Chicago Tribune Be the Next Newspaper Picked to the Bone? In early 2011, Alden was still considered a non-controlling investor, but by the end of the year, that would change. Ken Kelleher is an American sculptor. 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. 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. 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. 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.). That's because the fund is stepping in to buy and then gut newsrooms across the country. MNG Enterprises, Inc., doing business as Digital First Media and MediaNews Group, is a Denver, Colorado -based newspaper publisher owned by Alden Global Capital. The pay was terrible and the work was not glamorous, but Glidden loved his job. Below are highlights from his conversation with Morning Edition's A Martnez. 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 . Some expressed exasperation with the staff of the Chicago Tribune, who were unable to find a single interested local buyer. 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. 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. [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. The $633 million sale made Alden the nation's second largest newspaper owner in terms of circulation, with more than 200 newspapers. 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 . Instead, they gutted the place. (Freeman has, in the past, disputed Bainums account of the negotiations.) In conversations with former Alden employees, I heard repeatedly that their partnership seemed to transcend business. [30], Alden Global Capital includes a real estate division called Twenty Lake Holdings, which primarily buys excess real estate from 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. With Alden in control, he believes the Sun is now a prisoner that stands little chance of escape. 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 . As a reporter whos 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 Americas largest newspaper chains? Other large shareholders include Californian asset manager Capital Group and UK fund manager Jupiter Asset Management. Other records turned up from public pension funds and filings of publicly traded companies. 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.. . By McKay Coppins. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. 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. The newsroom was moved to a single room rented from the local chamber of commerce. Alden currently owns 32%. "[21], shareholder rights plan, colloquially known as a "poison pill", "Alden Global Capital LLC NEW YORK , NY", "Company Overview of Alden Global Capital LLC", "Heath Freeman of Alden Global Capital says he wants to save local news. 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. 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. Alden Global Capital had recently purchased a nearly one-third stake in the Suns parent company, Tribune Publishing, and the firm was signaling that it would soon come for the rest. [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. Gerry Smith. Meanwhile, the Tribunes remaining staff, which had been spread thin even before Alden came along, struggled to perform the newspapers most basic functions. 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. On the appointed afternoon, I dialed the number provided by his spokesperson and found myself talking to the most feared man in American newspapers. 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. Lee's board of directors . And everyone knows its going to run dry.. [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. Coordinated by . It . 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. Knight first reported its investment in Alden in 2010, noting the fair market value of its Alden holdings was $13.4 million. 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. But in the meantime, there isn't really anything that can fill the hole these newspapers will leave if they're shut down.