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. At one point, I tracked down the photographer whod taken the only existing picture of Smith on the internet. 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. Neither man will ever be the guest of honor at the annual dinner for the Committee to Protect Journalistsand thats probably fine by them. By Julie Reynolds. To David Simon, the whimpering end of The Baltimore Sun feels both inevitable and infuriating. Some in the industry say they wouldnt be surprised if Smith and Freeman end up becoming the biggest newspaper moguls in U.S. history. Chicago-based Tribune Publishing on Tuesday announced a proposed sale to hedge fund Alden Global Capital in a deal valued at $630 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. The company has been growing its portfolio and as of May 2021, owns over 100 newspapers and 200 assorted other publications. According to its 990s, Knight ended up making $185,000 over five years on its initial $13.4 million investment. hide caption. "And what we've seen in a lot of these places where newspapers have been scaled back or even closed is there really is no comparable product in place, whether it's by the government or by another news organization, to do what these local newspapers have done for hundreds of years.". The pay was terrible and the work was not glamorous, but Glidden loved his job. Read: What we lost when Gannett came to town. Smith & Company. 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. 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. In February 2021, he announced a handshake deal to buy the Sun from Alden for $65 million once it acquired Tribune Publishing. In the for-profit news arena, Knight is spurring the digital transformation of local newsrooms through the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, Sherry said. Youd be surprised. Maybe theyd cancel their subscriptions eventually; maybe the papers would fold altogether. To industry observers, Aldens brazen model set it apart even from chains like Gannett, known for its aggressive cost-cutting. 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. This once-proud publication is now owned and run by Alden Global Capital, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund with a long record of buying papers on the cheap, selling off their assets and slashing pay and jobs. But this acquisition was profound, making Alden Global . Of course, its easy to romanticize past eras of journalism. Iowa-based Lee Enterprises asks investors to help fight off hedge fund Alden Global Capital. When the city-hall reporter left a few months later, he picked up that beat too. 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." 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. I sort of bully people around to get stuff done, he boasted to The Washington Post in 1985. 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 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 . . Now it might be facing extinction. Have you heard of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital? 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. Knight began selling off its Alden holdings in 2012, and got completely out in 2014. City budgets balloon, along with corruption and dysfunction. In addition to the constant layoffs, our buildings were being sold, basic office supplies became scarce and the hot water stopped working. 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 . Reporters kept reporting, and editors kept editing, and the union kept looking for ways to put pressure on Alden. This investment strategy does not come without social consequences. Freeman never responded. So Freeman pivoted. Smith. A young man named Randall Duncan SmithRandy for shortstands next to his wife, Kathryn, answering quick-fire trivia questions in front of a live studio audience. When a local newspaper vanishes, research shows, it tends to correspond with lower voter turnout, increased polarization, and a general erosion of civic engagement. This is predatory.. She was writing about Aldens growing newspaper empire, and wanted to know what it was like to be the last news reporter in town. Newspapers Affect Us, Often In Ways We Don't Realize, 'Project Mayhem': Reporters Race To Save Tribune Papers From 'Vulture' Fund. 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.. Heath Freeman, president of Alden Global Capital, is known for pushing big cost reductions, which he says help to save newspapers. About a month after The Baltimore Sun was acquired by Alden, a senior editor at the paper took questions from anxious reporters on Zoom. Yes, today, it's a newspaper without a newsroom. My request for an interview with Smith was dismissed by his spokesperson before I finished asking. Alden Global Capital swallowed all of the Tribune's newspapers, including the New York Daily News, earlier in 2021. Some publications, such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, have developed successful long-term models that Aldens papers might try to follow. Much of the Knight family's once-grand newspaper empire was ultimately acquired by Alden Global Capital, while the family foundation invested in Alden funds. 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. 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? and our desire to support local newspapers over the long term." Alden said it wants to work Lee's board of . 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 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. What happens next? Hes impressed by their journalism, he told me, but his clearest takeaway is that theyre not nearly well funded enough. (Freeman has, in the past, disputed Bainums account of the negotiations.) He quotes H. L. Mencken, the papers crusading 20th-century columnist, on the joys of journalism: It is really the life of kings. It was like watching a slow-motion disaster, says Gregory Pratt, a reporter at the Chicago Tribune. On . * Edited from 'independent . California biotech billionaire and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns 24%, So who is investing with them? Through it all, the owners maintained their ruthless silencespurning interview requests and declining to articulate their plans for the paper. 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. The largest share of the blame was assigned to the Tribune board for allowing the sale to Alden to go through. October 14, 2021. Caleb will later recall, in an interview with D Magazine, asking his dad why he works so hard. 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. Knight first reported its investment in Alden in 2010, noting the fair market value of its Alden holdings was $13.4 million. Soon, Tribune-owned newsrooms across the country were kicking off similar campaigns. He scores big with a bankrupt aerospace manufacturer, and again with a Dallas-based drilling company. The story of Alden Capital begins on the set of a 1960s TV game show called Dream House. 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 . The $633 million sale made Alden the nation's second largest newspaper owner in terms of circulation, with more than 200 newspapers. [12] Lee owns daily newspapers in 77 markets in 26 states, and about 350 weekly and specialty publications. But beneath all the recriminations and infighting was a cruel reality: When faced with the likely decimation of the countrys largest local newspapers, most Americans didnt seem to care very much. Now he was feeling the effects of their management. Its World War II correspondent brought firsthand news of Nazi concentration camps to American readers; its editorial page had the power to make or break political careers in Maryland. 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. 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. That may well be the future of local news, he says. 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. The purchase represents the culmination of Alden's years-long drive to take over the company and its storied titles . Senior lenders under the deal were to swap debt for stock. Freeman, meanwhile, would later gloat to colleagues that Bainum was never serious about buying the newspapers and just wanted to bask in the worshipful media coverage his bid generated.
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