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

It played with my mind a little bit, Glidden told me. MediaNews Group came out of bankruptcy in March 2010 under the majority ownership of its lenders. Eventually he was the only news reporter left on staff, charged with covering the citys police, schools, government, courts, hospitals, and businesses. At the Pioneer Press , where its staff is down to 60, the paper produced a . 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. Heath Freeman, president of Alden Global Capital, is known for pushing big cost reductions, which he says help to save newspapers. By Julie Reynolds. 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. These include the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and The Baltimore Sun. 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 company has been growing its portfolio and as of May 2021, owns over 100 newspapers and 200 assorted other publications. Connecting this to the current state of American newspaper ownership seems rather tenuous.. Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. 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. It seemed reasonable to ask that they answer a few questions. 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. After all, it has a long and venerable history of supporting local news. 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. and our desire to support local newspapers over the long term." Alden said it wants to work Lee's board of . So Freeman pivoted. Baltimore is an underdog town, Liz Bowie, a Sun reporter who was at the meeting, told me. 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. That's because the fund is stepping in to buy and then gut newsrooms across the country. 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. But for all the theatrics, his marching orders were always the same: Cut more. [32], The company has been criticized for investing money for pensions of newspaper employees in funds it manages itself. Its not as if the Tribune is just withering on the vine despite the best efforts of the gardeners, Charlie Johnson, a former Metro reporter, told me after the latest round of buyouts this summer. Scott Olson/Getty Images It was clear that they didnt care about this being a business in the future. 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?. 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? 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. 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. 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. On the appointed afternoon, I dialed the number provided by his spokesperson and found myself talking to the most feared man in American newspapers. But whats happening in Chicago is different. We were like, Theyre not going to take our newspaper from us! 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. Two days after the deal was finalized, Alden announced an aggressive round of buyouts. Alden's holdings already spanned the country, including the . Bainum told me hed come to appreciate local journalism in the 1970s while serving in the Maryland state legislature. Its not the name or the flag., He may get his wish. They want to know who exactly profits when we learn, as Harvard Nieman Labs Ken Doctor recently reported, that the firm netted $160 million last year from its Digital First Media newspapers. 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. In my many conversations with people who have worked with Freeman, not one could recall seeing him read a newspaper. Neither man will ever be the guest of honor at the annual dinner for the Committee to Protect Journalistsand thats probably fine by them. "[25], In early December, the board of Lee unanimously rejected the Alden bid, saying that the Alden proposal "grossly undervalues Lee and fails to recognize the strength of our business today. 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. I asked. He used his own money to pull court records, and went years without going on a vacation. It feels like were going up against capitalism now, Lillian Reed, the reporter who helped launch the Save Our Sun campaign, told me. For Smith, the Palm Beach conservative and Trump ally, sticking it to the mainstream media might actually be a perk of Aldens strategy. 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.). According to Aldens scarce SEC filings, it currently has fewer than 10 investors, most of them from overseas. But who most of those few souls are, and how much of the hundreds of millions skimmed from DFM papers theyve received remains a deep, dark mystery. City budgets balloon, along with corruption and dysfunction. It was like watching a slow-motion disaster, says Gregory Pratt, a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. 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 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. Already the largest shareholder . Reading these stories now has a certain horror-movie quality: You want to somehow warn the unwitting victims of whats about to happen. "[28], In mid-February 2022, the Delaware court found in favor of Lee Enterprises. To industry observers, Aldens brazen model set it apart even from chains like Gannett, known for its aggressive cost-cutting. 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. In Orlando, the Sentinel ran an editorial pleading with the community to deliver us from Alden and comparing the hedge fund to a biblical plague of locusts. In Allentown, Pennsylvania, reporters held reader forums where they tried to instill a sense of urgency about the threat Alden posed to The Morning Call. The $633 million sale made Alden the nation's second largest newspaper owner in terms of circulation, with more than 200 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 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. 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. 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. ", "Hedge Fund Reaches a Deal to Buy Tribune Publishing", "Opinion - Will The Chicago Tribune Be the Next Newspaper Picked to the Bone? 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. In early 2011, Alden was still considered a non-controlling investor, but by the end of the year, that would change. By that point, Alden was widely known as the grim reaper of American newspapers, as Vanity Fair had put it, and news of the acquisition plans had unleashed a wave of panic across the industry. But for Simon, that paper exists entirely in the past. But as long as Alden had made back its money, the investment would be a success. And two, by at least 2013, those of us who worked at Alden-controlled papers (like me) were already experiencing the slashing and burning. Theres no industry that I can think of more integral to a working democracy than the local-news business, he said. But for that to happen, the Big Tech money would need to flow to underfunded newsrooms, not into the pockets of Aldens investors. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital will acquire the rest of what it does not already own of Tribune Publishing, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News and other local newspapers . Feb. 16, 2021 8:04 PM PT. But maybe the clearest illustration is in Vallejo, California, a city of about 120,000 people 30 miles north of San Francisco. In a news release Monday, Alden said it sent Lee's board a letter with the offer. Other large shareholders include Californian asset manager Capital Group and UK fund manager Jupiter Asset Management. This is predatory.. Traditional newspaper business model says you make 95% of your money off ad sales and the rest off subscriptions. Probably not.. When John Glidden first joined the Vallejo Times-Herald, in 2014, it had a staff of about a dozen reporters, editors, and photographers. It was all about the next quarters profit margins, says Matt DeRienzo, who worked as a publisher for Aldens Connecticut newspapers before finally resigning. Updated May 21, 2021 at 2:13 PM ET. 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. [29] This attempt also failed, as shareholders returned both directors to the Lee board despite Alden's opposition. Read: What we lost when Gannett came to town. 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. 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. Some publications, such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, have developed successful long-term models that Aldens papers might try to follow. Media . And that has consequences for democracy, as journalist McKay Coppins writes in The Atlantic. The new owners had announced a round of buyouts, some beloved staffers were leaving, and those who remained were worried about the future. Yes, today, it's a newspaper without a newsroom. 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 . No response came back. In a press release Monday, Nov. 22, 2021 Alden said it sent Lee's board a letter with the offer. But the group that jumps out to me on the list is the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. 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. Coppins offers several examples, like the Chicago Tribune and California's Vallejo Times-Herald. After college he worked at Hudson Studio, Art Foundry in Niverville, NY . A native of Vallejo, he was proud to work for his hometown paper. 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. After serving in the Carter administrations Treasury Department, Brian became widely knownand fearedin the 80s for his hard-line negotiating style. 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. The shows premise pits two couples against each other for the chance to win a home. 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. He writes a weekly column called Mugger that savages the citys journalists by name and frequently runs to 10,000 words. The movement gained traction in some markets, with local politicians and celebrities expressing solidarity. When Alden first started buying newspapers, at the tail end of the Great Recession, the industry responded with cautious optimism. You could look to Oakland, California, where the East Bay Times laid off 20 people one week after the paper won a Pulitzer. When it was over, a quarter of the newsroom was gone. He said that he still appreciated their journalism, but that he couldnt speak for his corporate bosses. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. These papers were in many cases left for dead by local families not willing to make the tough but appropriate decisions to get these news organizations to sustainability. 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. 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 . Alden gradually took control of the papers that would become DFM. Hellman and BNP together own 46.4 per cent of Allfunds' shares. The question was how. 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 . Located in the same Manhattan office building as Alden, it funds stem-cell research, health-related charities, arts and culture and Duke University, alma mater of Smiths protg Heath Freeman. 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. Through it all, the owners maintained their ruthless silencespurning interview requests and declining to articulate their plans for the paper. Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns. Several interim executive positions were also filled by people related to Alden or its parent, Smith Management LLC.[23]. Caleb will later recall, in an interview with D Magazine, asking his dad why he works so hard. 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. And when Chicago suffered a brutal summer crime wave, the paper had no one on the night shift to listen to the police scanner. A look at Alden Global Capital is the cover story of the latest . "[26] Shortly thereafter, Alden Global, through its operating unit Strategic Investment Opportunities, filed a lawsuit in state court in Delaware against Lee Enterprises. The rationale offered by the board was, Consistent with its fiduciary duties, Lees Board has taken this action to ensure our shareholders receive fair treatment, full transparency and protection in connection with Aldens unsolicited proposal to acquire Lee. 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 May, The Alden Global Capital a hedge fund, acquired Tribune Publishing TPCO for $633 million. But by 2014, it was becoming clear to Aldens executives that Patons approach would be difficult to monetize in the short term, according to people familiar with the firms thinking. [4][13], In November 2021, Alden made an offer to Lee to purchase the company in its entirety for roughly $141 million. [13], Newspapers in Alden's portfolio include Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Boston Herald, The Mercury News, East Bay Times, The Orange County Register, and Orlando Sentinel. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. This is a subscription-based business.. 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. He stops talking to the press, refuses to be photographed, and rarely appears in public. Freeman was only slightly more accessible. The Tribune Tower rises above the streets of downtown Chicago in a majestic snarl of . hide caption. These included several Cayman Island-based funds and another profiting from Greek debt stemming from that countrys financial crisis. The Banner will launch with about 50 journalistsnot far from the size of the Sunand an ambitious mandate. [3] [4] With its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in late . Even in the greed is good climate of the era, Randy is a polarizing character on Wall Street. If you went into a lab to create the perfect bro, Heath would be that creation, says one former executive at an Alden-owned company, who, like others in this story, requested anonymity to speak candidly. Last week, Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund notorious for slashing costs at its local titles, came down on the No side of the question, with editorial boards at papers that it owns stating that they will no longer endorse candidates for governor, US senator, or president. 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. But I had underestimated how little Aldens founders care about their standing in the journalism world. Shareholders of Tribune Publishing, one of the country's largest newspaper chains, on Friday approved a takeover by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. In truth, Freeman didnt seem particularly interested in defending Aldens reputation. A century later, the Tribune Tower has retained its grandeur. 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. [2][3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. Rapid-fire changes underway at newspapers sold to cost-slashing hedge fund Alden Global Capital have led to a profound case of the jitters at newsrooms like the New York Daily News. 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 . 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. Its hard to imagine theyd show, anyway. 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. about two hundred American newspapers. "[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. 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? 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 first reported its investment in Alden in 2010, noting the fair market value of its Alden holdings was $13.4 million. More to the point, Tribune Publishingwhich represents a substantial portion of Aldens titleswas profitable at the time of the acquisition. 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. 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. ", "The most feared owner in American journalism looks set to take some of its greatest assets", "Minority shareholder sues Denver Post parent and NY hedge fund over 'breaches of fiduciary duty', "What does the Chicago Tribune sale mean for the future of newsrooms? His editor cited a supposed journalistic infraction (Glidden had reported the resignation of a school superintendent before an agreed-upon embargo). 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. 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?. For Freeman, newspapers are financial assets and nothing morenumbers to be rearranged on spreadsheets until they produce the maximum returns for investors. In February 2021, he announced a handshake deal to buy the Sun from Alden for $65 million once it acquired Tribune Publishing. [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. 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. People who know him described Freemanwith his shellacked curls, perma-stubble, and omnipresent smirkas the archetypal Wall Street frat boy. So why be surprised that Knight-Ridder or anyone else is investing in destructive but profitable ventures? Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you . 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. but sadly on a global scale there is hardly any independent news sources left currently. The purchase represents the culmination of Alden's years-long drive to take over the company and its storied titles . They call Alden a vulture hedge fund, and I think thats honestly a misnomer, Johnson said. (Freeman denied this through a spokesperson.) He studied art at Alfred University under sculptors Glenn Zweygardt and William Parry. The bid by Alden Global Capital, which already owns about 200 local newspapers, had faced resistance from Tribune staff and last-ditch competition. | Michael Gray, WIkimedia Commons. Next year, Bainum will launch The Baltimore Banner, an all-digital, nonprofit news outlet. Lee Enterprises owns 77 daily newspapers, including the Buffalo News, Omaha World-Herald and the Tulsa World. 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. Alden is not a newspaper company, says Ann Marie Lipinski, a former editor in chief of the Chicago Tribune. He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. When the journalists created a Slack channel to coordinate their efforts across multiple newspapers, they dubbed it Project Mayhem.. Meanwhile, the Tribunes remaining staff, which had been spread thin even before Alden came along, struggled to perform the newspapers most basic functions. [4], Alden purchased a 5.9-percent stake in Lee Enterprises in January 2020. After a powerful Illinois state legislator resigned amid bribery allegations, the paper didnt have a reporter in Springfield to follow the resulting scandal. Its the meanness and the elegance of the capitalist marketplace brought to newspapers, Doctor told me. It has filed a lawsuit in its bid to buy out news publisher Lee Enterprises. The Alden Global Capital . But in the meantime, there isn't really anything that can fill the hole these newspapers will leave if they're shut down. 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. 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. 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. I felt like a terrible reporter because I couldnt get to everything.. Gerry Smith. Alden, which already owned one-third of . The editor in chief mysteriously resigned, and managers scrambled to deal with the cuts. But that would require slow, painstaking workand there are easier ways to make money. So who is investing with them? Dec 9, 2021. He says he visited the Tribune's office and was "really shocked by how grim the scene was." "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. The firm has a history of purchasing newspapers to cut costs wherever . Am I going to win against capitalism in America? 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.. , From the February 1905 issue: The confessions of a newspaper woman, The papers union hired a PR firm to launch a public-awareness campaign under the banner Save Our Sun and published a letter calling on the Tribune board to sell the paper to local owners. Year after year, the executives from Alden would order new budget cuts, and Glidden would end up with fewer co-workers and more work.