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Chicago-based Tribune Publishing on Tuesday announced a proposed sale to hedge fund Alden Global Capital in a deal valued at $630 million. Alden Global Capital already owns 200 publications and a 6% stake in Lee Enterprises. Now it might be facing extinction. In the for-profit news arena, Knight is spurring the digital transformation of local newsrooms through the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative, Sherry said. In 2016 (year of the most recent 990 available), the foundation invested $17 million in Alden funds. Hellman and BNP together own 46.4 per cent of Allfunds' shares. Soon, Tribune-owned newsrooms across the country were kicking off similar campaigns. Even as Aldens portfolio grew, Freeman rarely visited his newspapers. At one point, I tracked down the photographer whod taken the only existing picture of Smith on the internet. Have you heard of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital? In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business. Dec 9, 2021. 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 term vulture capitalism hasnt been invented yet, but Randy will come to be known as a pioneer in the field. But I had underestimated how little Aldens founders care about their standing in the journalism world. It turned out that those ownersNew York hedge funders whom Glidden took to calling the lizard peoplewere laser-focused on increasing the papers profit margins. Alden currently owns 32%. More to the point, Tribune Publishingwhich represents a substantial portion of Aldens titleswas profitable at the time of the acquisition. 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. Three days later, Bainumstill smarting from his experience with Alden, but worried about the Suns fatesent a pride-swallowing email to Freeman. (Freeman denied this through a spokesperson.) Of course, its easy to romanticize past eras of journalism. Im worried the worst is yet to come. 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 . Bainum envisioned rebuilding the paperwhich, by 2020, was down to a single full-time statehouse reporteras a nonprofit. Alden is in the business of making money, not journalism. Glidden, then a mild-mannered 30-year-old, had come to journalism later in life than most and was eager to prove himself. 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. 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. 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. The Ubiquity - The student news site of Quartz Hill High School "[18], Alden received critical coverage from the editorial staff at the Denver Post, who described Alden Global Capital as "vulture capitalists" after multiple staff layoffs. 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. A more honest argument might have claimed, as some economists have, that vulture funds like Alden play a useful role in creative destruction, dismantling outmoded businesses to make room for more innovative insurgents. 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. 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. Most responded with variations on the same question: Which recent stories from your newspapers have you especially appreciated? 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. When the journalists created a Slack channel to coordinate their efforts across multiple newspapers, they dubbed it Project Mayhem.. 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. A century later, the Tribune Tower has retained its grandeur. Bainum told me hed come to appreciate local journalism in the 1970s while serving in the Maryland state legislature. 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. On the appointed afternoon, I dialed the number provided by his spokesperson and found myself talking to the most feared man in American newspapers. 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. [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. (Freeman has, in the past, disputed Bainums account of the negotiations.) [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. These include the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and The Baltimore Sun. ", "Hedge Fund Reaches a Deal to Buy Tribune Publishing", "Opinion - Will The Chicago Tribune Be the Next Newspaper Picked to the Bone? The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. Its not the name or the flag., He may get his wish. 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. They call Alden a vulture hedge fund, and I think thats honestly a misnomer, Johnson said. So who is investing with them? 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. The new owners had announced a round of buyouts, some beloved staffers were leaving, and those who remained were worried about the future. Baltimore is an underdog town, Liz Bowie, a Sun reporter who was at the meeting, told me. Alden Capital's gutting of the Denver Post is the most discussed example of this, but there are many others. 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? In budget meetings, according to the former executive, Freeman hectored local publishers, demanding that they produce detailed numbers off the top of their head and then humiliating them when they couldnt. That's because the fund is stepping in to buy and then gut newsrooms across the country. It is a subsidiary of Alden Global Capital, the New York City hedge fund that backed the purchase of and dramatic cost-cutting at more than 100 newspapers causing more than 1,000 lost jobs. October 14, 2021. NPR reached out to Alden for a response. Researchers at the University of North Carolina found that Alden-owned newspapers have cut their staff at twice the rate of their competitors; not coincidentally, circulation has fallen faster too, according to Ken Doctor, a news-industry analyst who reviewed data from some of the papers. What threatens local newspapers now is not just digital disruption or abstract market forces. Who Profits From Alden Global Capital? 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. Vallejo deserves better. A few weeks after the story came out, he was fired. When Alden first started buying newspapers, at the tail end of the Great Recession, the industry responded with cautious optimism. 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. ), Crucially, the profits generated by Aldens newspapers did not go toward rebuilding newsrooms. 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. The story of Alden Capital begins on the set of a 1960s TV game show called Dream House. Otherwise, youre just peeing in the ocean.. That may well be the future of local news, he says. And that has consequences for democracy, as journalist McKay Coppins writes in The Atlantic. 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 Enterprises, the owner of daily newspapers in Winston-Salem and Greensboro, this morning rejected a hedge fund's proposal to take over the company. Smith, a reclusive Palm Beach septuagenarian, hasnt granted a press interview since the 1980s. Well, that wasnt the point. Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. 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. In a news release Monday, Alden said it sent Lee's board a letter with the offer. Ken Kelleher is an American sculptor. He had spoken on this issue before, and it was easy to see why. Below are highlights from his conversation with Morning Edition's A Martnez. I asked if anyone there at the time was aware of Aldens vulture business strategy. After a powerful Illinois state legislator resigned amid bribery allegations, the paper didnt have a reporter in Springfield to follow the resulting scandal. I asked. . On . 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. This all seemed especially relevant considering many Alden/DFM papers were previously part of the Knight-Ridder chain, the family news empire from which the foundation sprang. 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 . [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. A Cornell grad with an M.B.A., Randy is on a partner track at Bear Stearns, where hes poised to make a comfortable fortune simply by climbing the ladder. 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. We were in collective revolt, Lillian Reed, a Sun reporter who helped organize the campaign, told me. Through it all, the owners maintained their ruthless silencespurning interview requests and declining to articulate their plans for the paper. Most of his investments are defined by a cold pragmatism, but he takes a more personal interest in the media sector. Some expressed exasperation with the staff of the Chicago Tribune, who were unable to find a single interested local buyer. 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. All good works, and Knight is to be commended for them. Hes impressed by their journalism, he told me, but his clearest takeaway is that theyre not nearly well funded enough. New York hedge fund and U.S. newspaper consolidator Alden Global Capital LLC has made a proposal to take Lee Enterprises Inc. private in a deal that values the company at around $141 million. One early article, in the trade publication Poynter, suggested that Aldens interest in the local-news business could be seen as flattering and quoted the owner of The Denver Post as saying he had enormous respect for the firm. Read: What we lost when Gannett came to town. I felt like a terrible reporter because I couldnt get to everything.. He was fired after criticizing Alden in a Washington Post interview. It feels like were going up against capitalism now, Lillian Reed, the reporter who helped launch the Save Our Sun campaign, told me. [32], The company has been criticized for investing money for pensions of newspaper employees in funds it manages itself. As a young man, hed studied at divinity school before taking over his fathers company, and decades later he still carried a healthy sense of noblesse oblige. [12] Lee owns daily newspapers in 77 markets in 26 states, and about 350 weekly and specialty publications. Baltimore has always had its problems, he told me. "[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. 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 . . 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. 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. 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. On March 9, 2020, a small group of Baltimore Sun reporters convened a secret meeting at the downtown Hyatt Regency. 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 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. "60 Minutes" correspondent Jon Wertheim did a strong piece that aired Sunday night about the grim state of local newspapers, in part because of how hedge funds, such as Alden Global Capital . In conversations with former Alden employees, I heard repeatedly that their partnership seemed to transcend business. Reinventing their papers could require years of false starts and fine-tuningand, most important, a delayed payday for Aldens investors.

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