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

Theres little evidence that Alden cares about the sustainability of its newspapers. [10][19][20], The company has its origins in R.D. 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune Papers, Stop The Presses! 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. These were not exactly boom times for newspapers, after allat least someone wanted to buy them. He used his own money to pull court records, and went years without going on a vacation. Newspapers Affect Us, Often In Ways We Don't Realize, 'Project Mayhem': Reporters Race To Save Tribune Papers From 'Vulture' Fund. The most promising prospect materialized in Baltimore, where a hotel magnate named Stewart Bainum Jr. expressed interest in the Sun. On March 9, 2020, a small group of Baltimore Sun reporters convened a secret meeting at the downtown Hyatt Regency. Alden Global Capital owns 56 dailies under Digital First Media (Alden also owns 32% of Tribune 10 dailies in Column C.) Tribune Media owns 10 dailies. Longtime Tribune staffers had seen their share of bad corporate overlords, but this felt more calculated, more sinister. Those that have survived are smaller, weaker, and more vulnerable to acquisition. Maybe this obscure hedge fund had a plan. 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? 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? Smith, a reclusive Palm Beach septuagenarian, hasnt granted a press interview since the 1980s. For two men who employ thousands of journalists, remarkably little is known about them. 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. 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. But while its true that Alden entered the industry by purchasing floundering newspapers, not all of them were necessarily doomed to liquidation. 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. The bid by Alden Global Capital, which already owns about 200 local newspapers, had faced resistance from Tribune staff and last-ditch competition. A vulture doesnt hold a wounded animals head underwater. Other records turned up from public pension funds and filings of publicly traded companies. To many, it just didnt seem possible that Alden would instead choose to destroy newspapers by laying off the workforce en masse and stripping papers of all their assets. Aldens calculus was simple. Dec 9, 2021. Most of his investments are defined by a cold pragmatism, but he takes a more personal interest in the media sector. [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. If they did it right, Venetoulis said, they just might be able to line up a local, civic-minded owner for the paper. 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 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. It was like watching a slow-motion disaster, says Gregory Pratt, a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. Freeman was only slightly more accessible. But he has a big idea: He believes theres serious money to be made in buying troubled companies, steering them into bankruptcy, and then selling them off in parts. But in the case of local news, nothing comparable is ready to replace these papers when they die. Freemans father, Brian, was a successful investment banker who specialized in making deals on behalf of labor unions. Next up: Chicago, Baltimore, and the New York Daily News. 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. NPR reached out to Alden for a response. Youd be surprised. 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 maybe the clearest illustration is in Vallejo, California, a city of about 120,000 people 30 miles north of San Francisco. 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. 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 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 . 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. At the Suns peak, it employed more than 400 journalists, with reporters in London and Tokyo and Jerusalem. If Knights total divestment from Alden in 2014 was because someone made an ethical decision to stop dealing with the vulture fund, good for them. After a powerful Illinois state legislator resigned amid bribery allegations, the paper didnt have a reporter in Springfield to follow the resulting scandal. But for all the theatrics, his marching orders were always the same: Cut more. Am I going to win against capitalism in America? Financially, it was a raw deal. 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 has currently bid to buy all of Tribune. Tips that he would never have time to investigate piled up on a legal pad he kept at his desk. 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. 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. [4], Alden purchased a 5.9-percent stake in Lee Enterprises in January 2020. Media . And two, by at least 2013, those of us who worked at Alden-controlled papers (like me) were already experiencing the slashing and burning. Even in the greed is good climate of the era, Randy is a polarizing character on Wall Street. More to the point, Tribune Publishingwhich represents a substantial portion of Aldens titleswas profitable at the time of the acquisition. 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. 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 . [2] [3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. When a reporter asked if their work was still valued, the editor sounded deflated. It will rely initially on philanthropic donations, but he aims to sell enough subscriptions to make it self-sustaining within five years. In a news release Monday, Alden said it sent Lee's board a letter with the offer. For Smith, the Palm Beach conservative and Trump ally, sticking it to the mainstream media might actually be a perk of Aldens strategy. Have you heard of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital? Clearly, for Smith and Freeman, chop-shopping their newspapers paid off. 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. 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. [2] Its managing director is Heath Freeman. She was writing about Aldens growing newspaper empire, and wanted to know what it was like to be the last news reporter in town. 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 . It is the nations second-largest newspaper owner by circulation. 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. 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. To industry observers, Aldens brazen model set it apart even from chains like Gannett, known for its aggressive cost-cutting. The story of Alden Capital begins on the set of a 1960s TV game show called Dream House. At their worst, they used their papers to maintain oppressive social hierarchies. Smith. Year after year, the executives from Alden would order new budget cuts, and Glidden would end up with fewer co-workers and more work. Alden began its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in 2019, when they paid $117.9 million to Michael Ferro for his 25.2-percent stake. Knight began selling off its Alden holdings in 2012, and got completely out in 2014. 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. Misinformation proliferates. It was all about the next quarters profit margins, says Matt DeRienzo, who worked as a publisher for Aldens Connecticut newspapers before finally resigning. 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. These papers would have been liquidated if not for us stepping up.. Coordinated by . 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 . This is predatory.. Baltimore is an underdog town, Liz Bowie, a Sun reporter who was at the meeting, told me. 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. These included several Cayman Island-based funds and another profiting from Greek debt stemming from that countrys financial crisis. Lee Enterprises owns 77 daily newspapers, including the Buffalo News, Omaha World-Herald and the Tulsa World. I asked if anyone there at the time was aware of Aldens vulture business strategy. Somehow, no one's buying it. 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. 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. 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? We were in collective revolt, Lillian Reed, a Sun reporter who helped organize the campaign, told me. 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. 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. Former Knight-Ridder headquarters. The 21st century has seen many of these generational owners flee the industry, to devastating effect. he asks. . 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 . Soon, Tribune-owned newsrooms across the country were kicking off similar campaigns. Heath hopes the well never runs dry, but hes going to keep pumping until it does. This is the story weve been telling for decades about the dying local-news industry, and its not without truth. 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. You need real capital to move the needle, he told me. Its not the name or the flag., He may get his wish. But this acquisition was profound, making Alden Global . [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. 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. "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?" One acquaintance tells The Village Voice that hes the kind of guy who divests himself every couple of years to avoid ending up on lists of the worlds richest people. 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. Shortly after the Tribune deal closed earlier this year, I began trying to interview the men behind Alden Capital. Stewart Bainum, since losing his bid for the Sun, has been quietly working on a new venture. [3] [4] With its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in late . On the appointed afternoon, I dialed the number provided by his spokesperson and found myself talking to the most feared man in American newspapers. Alden, which already owned one-third of . 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. It hurts to see the paper like this, he told her. That's because the fund is stepping in to buy and then gut newsrooms across the country. 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. But in the meantime, there isn't really anything that can fill the hole these newspapers will leave if they're shut down. 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. 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. [29] This attempt also failed, as shareholders returned both directors to the Lee board despite Alden's opposition. Alden completed its takeover of the Tribune papers in May. 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. Theres no industry that I can think of more integral to a working democracy than the local-news business, he said. This investment strategy does not come without social consequences. Inside Alden Global Capital. Some people believe that local newspapers will eventually be replaced by new publications, which Coppins describes as "built from the ground-up for the digital era." MNG Enterprises, Inc., doing business as Digital First Media and MediaNews Group, is a Denver, Colorado -based newspaper publisher owned by Alden Global Capital. Now it might be facing extinction. Smith began investing in newspapers and media around the same time. With his own money, he helps his brother launch the New York Press, a free alt-weekly in Manhattan. [2][3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that owns The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press in Virginia, has proposed purchasing Lee Enterprises, the Iowa-based owner of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and most other major Virginia newspapers, for approximately $144 million, Alden announced Monday. Earnest and unpolished, with a perpetually mussed mop of hair, Bainum presented himself as a contrast to the cutthroat capitalists at Alden. Through it all, the owners maintained their ruthless silencespurning interview requests and declining to articulate their plans for the paper. "[26] Shortly thereafter, Alden Global, through its operating unit Strategic Investment Opportunities, filed a lawsuit in state court in Delaware against Lee Enterprises. Read: What we lost when Gannett came to town. 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. 'Sobs, gasps, expletives' over latest Denver Post layoffs", "The Hedge Fund Vampire That Bleeds Newspapers Dry Now Has the Chicago Tribune by the Throat", "How Massive Cuts Have Remade The Denver Post", "Newsonomics: By selling to Americas worst newspaper owners, Michael Ferro ushers the vultures into Tribune", "A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms", "Affiliated Media Files for Bankruptcy to Restructure (Update2)", "The shakeup at MediaNews: Why it could be the leadup to a massive newspaper consolidation", "Alden Global Capital to buy Tribune in deal valued at $630 million", "Lee Enterprises Enacts Poison Pill to Guard Against Alden Takeover", "Lee Enterprises Board Rejects Alden's Acquisition Offer", "Alden Global Capital takes Lee Enterprises to court over failed board nominations", "Alden Global Capital sues Lee Enterprises after rejected takeover bid", "Alden Global Capital loses lawsuit to nominate its slate of candidates for Lee Enterprises' board", "Lee Enterprises shareholders reelect three directors amid hedge fund fight", "Tampa Bay Times sells printing plant to developer for $21 million", "A hedge fund's 'mercenary' strategy: Buy newspapers, slash jobs, sell the buildings", "The hedge fund trying to buy Gannett faces federal probe after investing newspaper workers' pensions in its own funds", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alden_Global_Capital&oldid=1130942589, This page was last edited on 1 January 2023, at 19:27. Im worried the worst is yet to come. What most concerns him is how his city will manage without a robust paper keeping tabs on the people in charge. Even as Aldens portfolio grew, Freeman rarely visited his newspapers. 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. | Michael Gray, WIkimedia Commons. The specific shareholder rights plan adopted by the Lee board forbids Alden from purchasing more than 10% of the company, and will be in force for one year. All good works, and Knight is to be commended for them. ", "Denver Post Rebels Against Its Hedge-Fund Ownership", "Tribune Says Sale to Alden Wins Approval Amid Confusion Over Key Shareholder's Vote", "Lee Enterprises Shares Jump on Takeover Offer From Alden", "The vulture is hungry again: Alden Global Capital wants to buy a few hundred more newspapers", "Colorado Group Pushes to Buy Embattled Denver Post From New York Hedge Fund", "The battle for Tribune: Inside the campaign to find new owners for a legendary group of newspapers", "Is this strip-mining or journalism? [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. 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. 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 . Alden is known for . Since Alden's . Nov. 22, 2021. But that's not true for all of them. Connecting this to the current state of American newspaper ownership seems rather tenuous.. Shareholders of Tribune Publishing, one of the country's largest newspaper chains, on Friday approved a takeover by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. 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. If accepted, the $24 per share purchase price would . At the same time, he increased subscription prices in many markets; it would take awhile for subscribersmany of them older loyalists who didnt carefully track their billsto notice that they were paying more for a worse product. Freeman was more animated when he turned to the prospect of extracting money from Big Tech. 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.