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

Its being snuffed out, quarter after quarter after quarter. We were sitting in a coffee shop in Logan Square, and he was still struggling to make sense of what had happened. The new owners had announced a round of buyouts, some beloved staffers were leaving, and those who remained were worried about the future. By Julie Reynolds. Coordinated by . 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. The purchase represents the culmination of Alden's years-long drive to take over the company and its storied titles . 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. 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. 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. 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. Glidden had heard rumblings about the papers owners when he first took the job, but he hadnt paid much attention. It is the nations second-largest newspaper owner by circulation. And when Chicago suffered a brutal summer crime wave, the paper had no one on the night shift to listen to the police scanner. Its a game, Randy explains to his son. MediaNews Group came out of bankruptcy in March 2010 under the majority ownership of its lenders. Senior lenders under the deal were to swap debt for stock. 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. But that would require slow, painstaking workand there are easier ways to make money. Aldens website contains no information beyond the firms name, and its list of investors is kept strictly confidential. Instead, the money was used to finance the hedge funds other ventures. In conversations with former Alden employees, I heard repeatedly that their partnership seemed to transcend business. Next up: Chicago, Baltimore, and the New York Daily News. 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 . The newspaper lost a quarter of its staff to buyouts after it was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May. about two hundred American newspapers. , 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. But outside the industry, few seemed to notice. Before our interview, Id contacted a number of Aldens reporters to find out what they would ask their boss if they ever had the chance. You could look to Oakland, California, where the East Bay Times laid off 20 people one week after the paper won a Pulitzer. It will rely initially on philanthropic donations, but he aims to sell enough subscriptions to make it self-sustaining within five years. It played with my mind a little bit, Glidden told me. 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 . [12] Lee owns daily newspapers in 77 markets in 26 states, and about 350 weekly and specialty publications. So why be surprised that Knight-Ridder or anyone else is investing in destructive but profitable ventures? Somehow, no one's buying it. Im repulsed by the incestuous world of New York journalism, he tells New York magazine. What exactly went wrong would become a point of bitter debate among the journalists involved in the campaigns. 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. The 21st century has seen many of these generational owners flee the industry, to devastating effect. My answer is its hard to know. Knight first reported its investment in Alden in 2010, noting the fair market value of its Alden holdings was $13.4 million. 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 . In the ensuing exodus, the paper lost the Metro columnist who had championed the occupants of a troubled public-housing complex, and the editor who maintained a homicide database that the police couldnt manipulate, and the photographer who had produced beautiful portraits of the states undocumented immigrants, and the investigative reporter whod helped expose the governors offshore shell companies. Most responded with variations on the same question: Which recent stories from your newspapers have you especially appreciated? One, the warning shot was fired in 2011, in a Poynter Institute article titled Who is investor Randall Smith and why is he buying up newspaper companies? Randall Smith is the co-founder of Alden, together with his young protg, Heath Freeman, and has been called the grandfather of vulture investing. Vulture funds by definition dont reinvest in their properties they suck them dry. Alden, which already owned one-third of . [4], Alden purchased a 5.9-percent stake in Lee Enterprises in January 2020. In February 2021, he announced a handshake deal to buy the Sun from Alden for $65 million once it acquired Tribune Publishing. The company has been growing its portfolio and as of May 2021, owns over 100 newspapers and 200 assorted other publications. 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. A look at Alden Global Capital is the cover story of the latest . Knight spokesman Andrew Sherry declined to answer any of those questions, saying instead, Our endowment investments support our grantmaking., We invested approximately one half of one percent of our endowment in an Alden fund between late 2009 and early 2014, he said via email. 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. They want to know who exactly profits when we learn, as Harvard Nieman Lab's Ken Doctor recently reported, that the firm netted $160 million last year from its Digital First Media . Year after year, the executives from Alden would order new budget cuts, and Glidden would end up with fewer co-workers and more work. It's a tangled tale but essentially Asylum produced a film for the McDonald's charitable foundation for Leo. Freeman was only slightly more accessible. 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. That gave the journalists at the Sun a brief window to stop the sale from going through. 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 . 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. But in the meantime, there isn't really anything that can fill the hole these newspapers will leave if they're shut down. Financially, it was a raw deal. After weeks of back-and-forth, he agreed to a phone call, but only if parts of the conversation could be on background (which is to say, I could use the information generally but not attribute it to him). We dont hear from them Theyre, like, nameless, faceless people., In the months that followed, the Sun did not immediately experience the same deep staff cuts that other papers did. Those that have survived are smaller, weaker, and more vulnerable to acquisition. Have you heard of the hedge fund Alden Global Capital? 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. Meanwhile, with few newsroom jobs left to eliminate, Alden continued to find creative ways to cut costs. "[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. 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. 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. 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. "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.". 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. Tribune Publishing last month approved a $630m takeover deal with Alden Global Capital. 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. When the Chicago Tribune held a Save Local News rally, most of the people who showed up were members of the media. He shut down Project Thunderdome, parted ways with Paton, and placed all of Aldens newspapers on the auction block. By 2011, when Aldens Distressed Opportunities Fund lost more than 20 percent of its value, Knights holdings in the fund were valued at $10.7 million. At the time, the Sun had a bustling bureau in Annapolis, and he marveled at the reporters ability to sort the honest politicians from the political whores by exposing abuses of power. To David Simon, the whimpering end of The Baltimore Sun feels both inevitable and infuriating. According to its 990s, Knight ended up making $185,000 over five years on its initial $13.4 million investment. Alden Capital's gutting of the Denver Post is the most discussed example of this, but there are many others. It felt important. 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. Around this time, Randy becomes preoccupied with privacy. When it was over, a quarter of the newsroom was gone. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. And that has consequences for democracy, as journalist McKay Coppins writes in The Atlantic. * Edited from 'independent . Reading these stories now has a certain horror-movie quality: You want to somehow warn the unwitting victims of whats about to happen. By McKay Coppins. With full control of Tribune Publishing, Alden Global Capital is scrambling to squeeze out a return on its $600 million investment in the struggling Chicago-based newspaper company. Coppins offers several examples, like the Chicago Tribune and California's Vallejo Times-Herald. 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 . 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. 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? Freeman never responded. 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. Lee's board of directors . No response came back. In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business. There were sober op-eds and lamentations on Twitter and expressions of disappointment by professors of journalism. The shows premise pits two couples against each other for the chance to win a home. He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. These included several Cayman Island-based funds and another profiting from Greek debt stemming from that countrys financial crisis. Its hard to imagine theyd show, anyway. Soon, Tribune-owned newsrooms across the country were kicking off similar campaigns. The Tribune Tower, the iconic former home of the Chicago Tribune, seen in Chicago, Illinois in 2015. 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. (Freeman denied this through a spokesperson.) Hellman and BNP together own 46.4 per cent of Allfunds' shares. A reporter at one of his newspapers suggested I try doorstepping Smithshowing up at his home unannounced to ask questions from the porch. This story originally appeared on the Morning Edition live blog. Eventually he was the only news reporter left on staff, charged with covering the citys police, schools, government, courts, hospitals, and businesses. But he couldnt help feeling that the police scandal would have been exposed much sooner if the Sun were operating at full force. Or to Denver, where the Posts staff was cut by two-thirds, evicted from its newsroom, and relocated to a plant in an area with poor air quality, where some employees developed breathing problems. She was writing about Aldens growing newspaper empire, and wanted to know what it was like to be the last news reporter in town. 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 . 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. California biotech billionaire and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns 24%, Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns. 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). 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. When a local newspaper vanishes, research shows, it tends to correspond with lower voter turnout, increased polarization, and a general erosion of civic engagement. Youd be surprised. John Temple: My newspaper died 10 years ago. Read: What we lost when Gannett came to town. "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 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. We were in collective revolt, Lillian Reed, a Sun reporter who helped organize the campaign, told me. 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. With his own money, he helps his brother launch the New York Press, a free alt-weekly in Manhattan. 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. Newspapers Affect Us, Often In Ways We Don't Realize, 'Project Mayhem': Reporters Race To Save Tribune Papers From 'Vulture' Fund. 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. Alden Global Capital has currently bid to buy all of Tribune. 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. 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. How do you know who wins? the boy asks. 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. At the time, even savvy media insiders like Martin Langeveld wistfully predicted Alden would keep newspapers future in mind: Smith knows that the only way to win his big bet on the future of newspapers is to turn them into nimble, modern digital news enterprises.. One known investor, however, is the Randall and Barbara Smith Foundation, named for Alden founder Smith and his wife. 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. Am I going to win against capitalism in America? The men killing Americas newspapers, how Slack upended the workplace, and the new meth. For Smith, the Palm Beach conservative and Trump ally, sticking it to the mainstream media might actually be a perk of Aldens strategy. 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. But by 2013, despite deep losses to Alden funds overall values in the previous two years, Smith was able to begin buying his now infamous swath of South Florida mansions for $58 million and Freeman was acquiring multi-million-dollar New York condos. 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." '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. 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. 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. ", "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? But whats happening in Chicago is different. The Tribune Tower, the iconic former home of the Chicago Tribune, seen in Chicago, Illinois in 2015. He writes a weekly column called Mugger that savages the citys journalists by name and frequently runs to 10,000 words. At the Pioneer Press , where its staff is down to 60, the paper produced a . 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. 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. 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. Shareholders of Tribune Publishing, one of the country's largest newspaper chains, on Friday approved a takeover by hedge fund Alden Global Capital. October 14, 2021. The audio for this interview was produced by Ryan Benk and edited by Scott Saloway. (Freeman denied this characterization through a spokesperson. They are also defined by an obsessive secrecy. 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. 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?. You need real capital to move the needle, he told me. 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. Morale tanked; reporters burned out. "[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. Some publications, such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, have developed successful long-term models that Aldens papers might try to follow. Even in the greed is good climate of the era, Randy is a polarizing character on Wall Street. Feb 16, 2021 at 8:05 pm. To him, its the same as oil, the publisher said. In 2016 (year of the most recent 990 available), the foundation invested $17 million in Alden funds. We were like, Theyre not going to take our newspaper from us! 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 1% own and operate the . Feb. 16, 2021 8:04 PM PT. Three days later, Bainumstill smarting from his experience with Alden, but worried about the Suns fatesent a pride-swallowing email to Freeman. Vallejo deserves better. A few weeks after the story came out, he was fired. 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? 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. After all, it has a long and venerable history of supporting local news. But I had underestimated how little Aldens founders care about their standing in the journalism world. Alden began its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in 2019, when they paid $117.9 million to Michael Ferro for his 25.2-percent stake. 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. 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 . Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you . [11], In November 2021, Alden Global Capital made an offer to purchase Lee Enterprises for $24 a share in cash, or about $141 million. He says he visited the Tribune's office and was "really shocked by how grim the scene was." These papers would have been liquidated if not for us stepping up.. [2] [3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. People who know him described Freemanwith his shellacked curls, perma-stubble, and omnipresent smirkas the archetypal Wall Street frat boy. To be sure, the Knight Foundation does much to help promote and sustain local news. When Alden first started buying newspapers, at the tail end of the Great Recession, the industry responded with cautious optimism. A group of 11 community newspapers owned by Red Wing Publishing Co. have been sold to MediaNews Group, owner of the St. Paul Pioneer Press and more than 100 newspapers across the country. Today, we know that Knight, CalPERS and others no longer invest with Alden. But maybe the clearest illustration is in Vallejo, California, a city of about 120,000 people 30 miles north of San Francisco. 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. [30], Alden Global Capital includes a real estate division called Twenty Lake Holdings, which primarily buys excess real estate from newspapers. . The bid by Alden Global Capital, which already owns about 200 local newspapers, had faced resistance from Tribune staff and last-ditch competition. 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. [4], In 2019, Alden attempted, but failed at, a hostile takeover of Gannett. That may well be the future of local news, he says. In May 2021, Tribune Publishing finalized its sale to Alden, after having announced in February 2021 that it intended to pursue this path. Glidden, then a mild-mannered 30-year-old, had come to journalism later in life than most and was eager to prove himself. This is predatory.. Instead, they gutted the place. "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 .