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. 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. (Freeman denied this through a spokesperson.) Who Profits From Alden Global Capital? You'd be surprised. Digital First Media - Wikipedia If accepted, the $24 per share purchase price would . This is a subscription-based business.. 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. 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. Controversial hedge fund Alden Global wins bidding for Chicago Tribune 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 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. He told me it will begin with an annual operating budget of $15 million, unprecedented for an outfit of this kind. Lee Enterprises owns 77 daily newspapers, including the Buffalo News, Omaha World-Herald and the Tulsa World. (Freeman denied this characterization through a spokesperson. Soon, Tribune-owned newsrooms across the country were kicking off similar campaigns. Interestingly, Smiths foundation didnt do well with its Alden investments in 2016. Smith, a reclusive Palm Beach septuagenarian, hasnt granted a press interview since the 1980s. Hedge fund Alden Global is buying newspaper chain Tribune Publishing - CNN Next up: Chicago, Baltimore, and the New York Daily News. But there are some clues here and there. When hed agreed to the interview, Id expected him to say the things he was supposed to saythat the layoffs and buyouts were necessary but tragic; that he held local journalism in the highest esteem; that he felt a sacred responsibility to steer these newspapers toward a robust future. 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. A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms. [12] Lee owns daily newspapers in 77 markets in 26 states, and about 350 weekly and specialty publications. . 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. . Billionaires battle for Tribune Publishing | The Economist 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 . Some in the industry say they wouldnt be surprised if Smith and Freeman end up becoming the biggest newspaper moguls in U.S. history. Its a game, Randy explains to his son. Alden, which took Chicago-based newspaper chain Tribune Publishing private in May, said it made a proposal to buy Lee for $24 a share in cash, a 30% premium to Friday's closing price for . Baltimore is an underdog town, Liz Bowie, a Sun reporter who was at the meeting, told me. 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. The vulture is hungry again: Alden Global Capital wants to buy a few The scene was somehow even grimmer than Id imagined. Alden Global Capital makes an offer for Lee Enterprises, a big Orders for non-defence capital goods excluding aircraft a closely watched proxy for business investment, rose 0.8 per cent in January from a month earlier, comfortably above economists . Meanwhile, reporters fanned out across their respective cities in search of benevolent rich people to buy their newspapers. Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns. he asks. Alden Global Capital has currently bid to buy all of Tribune. On the appointed afternoon, I dialed the number provided by his spokesperson and found myself talking to the most feared man in American newspapers. 'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune Papers, Stop The Presses! Even in the greed is good climate of the era, Randy is a polarizing character on Wall Street. The men who devised this model are Randall Smith and Heath Freeman, the co-founders of Alden Global Capital. One conclusions even these reporters are hesitant to make is that we are all dealing within a capitalist system which has none, or few, principles to guide itself, apart from making a profit, no matter how. Probably not.. For Smith, the Palm Beach conservative and Trump ally, sticking it to the mainstream media might actually be a perk of Aldens strategy. When it was over, a quarter of the newsroom was gone. 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 . Instead, they gutted the place. At the Pioneer Press , where its staff is down to 60, the paper produced a . He shut down Project Thunderdome, parted ways with Paton, and placed all of Aldens newspapers on the auction block. By the charitys own accounting, it lost $ 2.3 million in book value on a $17 million investment that year. Alden Global Looks to Buy Newspaper Publisher Lee Enterprises "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?" It's a tangled tale but essentially Asylum produced a film for the McDonald's charitable foundation for Leo. 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. It felt important. The show draws from a book written by a Sun reporter, and Simon was quick to point out that the paper still has good journalists covering important stories. 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. Hedge fund Alden Global Capital, known for making deep newsroom cuts, won approval to acquire Tribune Publishing, which includes the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and New York Daily News. Feb 16, 2021 at 8:05 pm. Vallejo deserves better. A few weeks after the story came out, he was fired. 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. 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. 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. California biotech billionaire and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns 24%, about two hundred American newspapers. qhhsubiquity.com Informacin detallada del sitio web y la empresa The newsroom was moved to a single room rented from the local chamber of commerce. 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. But in the case of local news, nothing comparable is ready to replace these papers when they die. 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. After all, it has a long and venerable history of supporting local news. They had a father-figure relationship, one told me. Have you heard of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital? ), Crucially, the profits generated by Aldens newspapers did not go toward rebuilding newsrooms. 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 . [4], In 2019, Alden attempted, but failed at, a hostile takeover of Gannett. I asked, What is the Foundations perspective on those investments now, as news of Aldens gutting of these newspapers has come to light?. A look at Alden Global Capital is the cover story of the latest . Heath hopes the well never runs dry, but hes going to keep pumping until it does. Smith & Company. These were not exactly boom times for newspapers, after allat least someone wanted to buy them. This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog. That gave the journalists at the Sun a brief window to stop the sale from going through. Newspaper publisher Lee Enterprises is asking its shareholders to help it fight off a hostile takeover . [15][16] In March 2018, Margaret Sullivan, the media columnist for The Washington Post, called Alden "one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism. A recent Financial Times analysis found that half of all daily newspapers in the U.S. are controlled by financial firms, and Coppins says that number is all but certain to keep growing. [11], In November 2021, Alden Global Capital made an offer to purchase Lee Enterprises for $24 a share in cash, or about $141 million. But the group that jumps out to me on the list is the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Heath Freeman in an undated photo provided by Goldin Solutions . Nov. 22, 2021. The details of how Smith got to know him are opaque, but the resulting loyalty was evident. For Freeman and his investors to come out ahead, they didnt need to worry about the long-term health of the assetsthey just needed to maximize profits as quickly as possible. 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. Alden Global Capital is buying and gutting local newspapers : NPR - NPR.org 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. Senior lenders under the deal were to swap debt for stock. About a month after The Baltimore Sun was acquired by Alden, a senior editor at the paper took questions from anxious reporters on Zoom. 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?. Three days later, Bainumstill smarting from his experience with Alden, but worried about the Suns fatesent a pride-swallowing email to Freeman. Why Chicago Tribune Staffers Are Terrified Of Their Hedge Fund - Forbes It . , 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. 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. The Tribune Tower rises above the streets of downtown Chicago in a majestic snarl of . So why be surprised that Knight-Ridder or anyone else is investing in destructive but profitable ventures? 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. On the surface, the answer might seem obvious. Alden Global Capital makes offer for Lee Enterprises, owner of Winston Connecting this to the current state of American newspaper ownership seems rather tenuous.. In addition to the constant layoffs, our buildings were being sold, basic office supplies became scarce and the hot water stopped working. On Monday, Dail Alden Global Capital, the Hedge Fund Killing Newspapers - The Atlantic Below are highlights from his conversation with Morning Edition's A Martnez. Alden gradually took control of the papers that would become DFM. By McKay Coppins. In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business. 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. The bid by Alden Global Capital, which already owns about 200 local newspapers, had faced resistance from Tribune staff and last-ditch competition. It hurts to see the paper like this, he told her. He says he visited the Tribune's office and was "really shocked by how grim the scene was." Baltimore has always had its problems, he told me. Eventually he was the only news reporter left on staff, charged with covering the citys police, schools, government, courts, hospitals, and businesses. Inside Alden Global Capital. Iowa's Lee Enterprises seeks help to fight Alden's takeover bid Its a hedge that went and bought up some titles that it milks for cash.. "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 . [14], Alden has a reputation for sharply cutting costs by reducing the number of journalists working on its newspapers. But for Simon, that paper exists entirely in the past. Theres little evidence that Alden cares about the sustainability of its newspapers. [2] Its managing director is Heath Freeman. Freeman never responded. 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. [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. 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. Through it all, the owners maintained their ruthless silencespurning interview requests and declining to articulate their plans for the paper. A century later, the Tribune Tower has retained its grandeur. The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. [33], Alden Global Capital's management of American newspapers has been criticized. 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.. He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. They are also defined by an obsessive secrecy. It has not, however, retained the Chicago Tribune. Alden, which already owned one-third of . Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. Caleb will later recall, in an interview with D Magazine, asking his dad why he works so hard. Alden Global Capital Is Killing the Newsroom - Common Dreams Who Profits From Alden Global Capital? 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. The endorsement debate swings around again - Columbia Journalism Review The hollowing-out of the Chicago Tribune was noted in the national press, of course. Of course, its easy to romanticize past eras of journalism. The question was how. In my many conversations with people who have worked with Freeman, not one could recall seeing him read a newspaper. 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. 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. 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. 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. The families that used to own the bulk of Americas local newspapersthe Bonfilses of Denver, the Chandlers of Los Angeleswere never perfect stewards. 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. 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. "[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. 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 about $141 million. Clearly, for Smith and Freeman, chop-shopping their newspapers paid off. Alden Global Capital - Wikipedia In early 2011, Alden was still considered a non-controlling investor, but by the end of the year, that would change. Hedge Fund Alden in Hunt for Another Big Newspaper Chain When the journalists created a Slack channel to coordinate their efforts across multiple newspapers, they dubbed it Project Mayhem.. After Brian took his own life, in 2001, Smith became a mentor and confidant to Heath, who was in college at the time of his fathers death. Read: What we lost when Gannett came to town. So who is investing with them? 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. With Alden in control, he believes the Sun is now a prisoner that stands little chance of escape. Otherwise, youre just peeing in the ocean.. On . But outside the industry, few seemed to notice. Hedge fund Alden to buy Tribune Publishing in deal valued at $630 Lee's board of directors . With aggressive cost-cutting, Alden can operate its newspapers at a profit for years while turning out a steadily worse product, indifferent to the subscribers its alienating. 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. Hedge fund Alden in hunt for another big newspaper chain By the 1980s, this strategy has made Randy luxuriously wealthyvacations in the French Riviera, a family compound outside New York Cityand he has begun to school his children on the wonders of capitalism. Aldens website contains no information beyond the firms name, and its list of investors is kept strictly confidential. What's in the fine print in Alden's offer to takeover Tribune? - The The shows premise pits two couples against each other for the chance to win a home. At their worst, they used their papers to maintain oppressive social hierarchies. [31], In 2019, Twenty Lake Holdings reported that it had acquired about 180 properties with 2.3 million square feet of real estate in 29 states. 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. If you're a reader of local newspapers particularly the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun or New York Daily News you're going to want to make sure the answer is yes. But when I emailed his studio looking for information, I was informed curtly that the photo was no longer available. Had Smith bought the rights himself? 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. 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. Alden Global Capital already owns 200 publications and a 6% stake in Lee Enterprises. Scott Olson/Getty Images To replace a paper like the Sun would require a large, talented staff that covers not just government, but sports and schools and restaurants and art. Read: Local news is dying, and Americans have no idea, From 2015 to 2017, he presided over staff reductions of 36 percent across Aldens newspapers, according to an analysis by the NewsGuild (a union that also represents employees of The Atlantic). Joe Pompeo pilloried Alden in Vanity Fair for reducing newsrooms. It feels like were going up against capitalism now, Lillian Reed, the reporter who helped launch the Save Our Sun campaign, told me. Since Alden's . 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. 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. But even for a group of journalists, it was tough to keep the publics attention. Some have even suggested that this represents Americas last chance to save its local-news industry. Hedge fund Alden in hunt for another big newspaper chain - WKMG 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, in a . And that has consequences for democracy, as journalist McKay Coppins writes in The Atlantic. 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. As the months passed, things kept getting worse. [2][3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. What Alden's potential acquisition of Lee Enterprises means for 20-plus 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. When Alden first got into the news business, Freeman seemed willing to indulge some innovation. . 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. This Is How a Newspaper Dies - POLITICO Magazine 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. It has filed a lawsuit in its bid to buy out news publisher Lee Enterprises. Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link. Freeman was more animated when he turned to the prospect of extracting money from Big Tech. [21], Under the acquisition plan, MediaNews Group debt fell to $165 million from about $930 million. 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. The Ubiquity - The student news site of Quartz Hill High School 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. Bainum envisioned rebuilding the paperwhich, by 2020, was down to a single full-time statehouse reporteras a nonprofit. Tips that he would never have time to investigate piled up on a legal pad he kept at his desk. I felt like a terrible reporter because I couldnt get to everything.. How Alden Global Capital will make money owning Tribune Publishing He writes a weekly column called Mugger that savages the citys journalists by name and frequently runs to 10,000 words. 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. 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? How this 'vulture' hedge fund's gutting of local newsrooms could hurt Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. There were sober op-eds and lamentations on Twitter and expressions of disappointment by professors of journalism.