[22] The appointees to the MediaNews board were replaced by new directors representing the stockholders group led by Alden Global Capital. Baltimore has always had its problems, he told me. The term vulture capitalism hasnt been invented yet, but Randy will come to be known as a pioneer in the field. I sort of bully people around to get stuff done, he boasted to The Washington Post in 1985. Its a game, Randy explains to his son. 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.
Tribune shareholders approve takeover by Alden Global Capital Freeman, his 41-year-old protg and the president of the firm, would be unrecognizable in most of the newsrooms he owns.
Hedge fund Alden's bid to buy Chicago Tribune, other papers approved by Tribune Sale to Alden Approved by Shareholders - The New York Times He declined to meet me in person or to appear on Zoom. In 2016 (year of the most recent 990 available), the foundation invested $17 million in Alden funds. 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. In May, The Alden Global Capital a hedge fund, acquired Tribune Publishing TPCO for $633 million. Its a hedge that went and bought up some titles that it milks for cash.. Scott Olson/Getty Images
Hedge fund Alden Global Capital in hunt for Lee Enterprises 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. To him, its the same as oil, the publisher said. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. 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. 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. They are also defined by an obsessive secrecy. 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. Alden, which already owned one-third of . 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? 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 . Some publications, such as the Minneapolis Star Tribune, have developed successful long-term models that Aldens papers might try to follow. Craigslist killed the Classified section, Google and Facebook swallowed up the ad market, and a procession of hapless newspaper owners failed to adapt to the digital-media age, making obsolescence inevitable. Tips that he would never have time to investigate piled up on a legal pad he kept at his desk. At the time, finalternatives.com reported that the Global Distress Opportunities fund would focus on financial firms as well as homebuilding, gaming and auto-related names.. 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 .
'Vulture' Fund Alden Global, Known For Slashing Newsrooms, Buys Tribune What most concerns him is how his city will manage without a robust paper keeping tabs on the people in charge. 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. Collectively, they control about one-half of daily newspapers in the U.S. 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. These were not exactly boom times for newspapers, after allat least someone wanted to buy them. He had spoken on this issue before, and it was easy to see why. 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 there are some clues here and there. On the appointed afternoon, I dialed the number provided by his spokesperson and found myself talking to the most feared man in American newspapers. 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. [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. [10] With its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in late May 2021, Alden is collectively the second-largest owner of newspapers in the United States, as calculated by average daily print circulation, second only to Gannett. 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. 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. Now it might be facing extinction. ", "Denver Post Rebels Against Its Hedge-Fund Ownership", "Tribune Says Sale to Alden Wins Approval Amid Confusion Over Key Shareholder's Vote", "Lee Enterprises Shares Jump on Takeover Offer From Alden", "The vulture is hungry again: Alden Global Capital wants to buy a few hundred more newspapers", "Colorado Group Pushes to Buy Embattled Denver Post From New York Hedge Fund", "The battle for Tribune: Inside the campaign to find new owners for a legendary group of newspapers", "Is this strip-mining or journalism? I would know he didnt mean it, and he would know he didnt mean it, but he would at least go through the motions. . Now he was feeling the effects of their management. He can cite decades-old scoops and tell you whom they pissed off. "[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. They could be vain, bumbling, even corrupt. Alden is known for . [7][8] Alden's purchase price was $635 million, or $17.25 per share.
Alden Global Capital seeks to buy Lee Enterprises for $144M 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.
The Hedge Fund Vampire That Bleeds Newspapers Dry Now Has the Smith. Youd be surprised. But he couldnt help feeling that the police scandal would have been exposed much sooner if the Sun were operating at full force. Bainum told me hed come to appreciate local journalism in the 1970s while serving in the Maryland state legislature. The newsroom was moved to a single room rented from the local chamber of commerce. 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. 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. 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.
Alden Global Capital - Wikipedia So why be surprised that Knight-Ridder or anyone else is investing in destructive but profitable ventures? 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. Tribune Publishing last month approved a $630m takeover deal with Alden Global Capital. NPR reached out to Alden for a response. But this acquisition was profound, making Alden Global .
How Alden Global Capital will make money owning Tribune Publishing [2] Its managing director is Heath Freeman. My answer is its hard to know. Instead, they gutted the place. Next year, Bainum will launch The Baltimore Banner, an all-digital, nonprofit news outlet. Theres little evidence that Alden cares about the sustainability of its newspapers. Interestingly, Smiths foundation didnt do well with its Alden investments in 2016. 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. 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. 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.
Local newsrooms strained by budget-slashing financial firms Traditional newspaper business model says you make 95% of your money off ad sales and the rest off subscriptions. A vulture doesnt hold a wounded animals head underwater. Its hard to imagine theyd show, anyway. About a month after The Baltimore Sun was acquired by Alden, a senior editor at the paper took questions from anxious reporters on Zoom. Theyre being targeted by investors who have figured out how to get rich by strip-mining local-news outfits.
Why Chicago Tribune Staffers Are Terrified Of Their Hedge Fund - Forbes He writes a weekly column called Mugger that savages the citys journalists by name and frequently runs to 10,000 words.
What's in the fine print in Alden's offer to takeover Tribune? - The 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. 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. 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. Already the largest shareholder . 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, the Hedge Fund Killing Newspapers - The Atlantic You can bypass most soft paywalls with a little CSS knowledge In its bid to acquire Tribune Publishing, the hedge fund Alden Global Capital vowed to provide $375 million in cash to the owner of the Chicago Tribune, the Baltimore Sun and other titles a . Joe Pompeo pilloried Alden in Vanity Fair for reducing newsrooms. Baltimore is an underdog town, Liz Bowie, a Sun reporter who was at the meeting, told me. Lee, which owns the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Omaha World-Herald and many other daily newspapers throughout the region, is staving off a takeover attempt by Alden Global Capital, a New-York . 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. 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. On . 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.
Lee blocks Alden Global Capital move for more board control - STLPR To David Simon, the whimpering end of The Baltimore Sun feels both inevitable and infuriating. 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. You need real capital to move the needle, he told me. 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 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. In May, the Tribune was acquired by Alden Global Capital, a secretive hedge fund that has quickly, and with remarkable ease, become one of the largest newspaper operators in the country. 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. It seemed reasonable to ask that they answer a few questions. by Magnus Shaw..An enormous advertising company (Leo Burnett) and a small creative film company (Asylum) have had a difficult couple of weeks. [32], The company has been criticized for investing money for pensions of newspaper employees in funds it manages itself. 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. In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business.
Billionaires battle for Tribune Publishing | The Economist The $633 million sale made Alden the nation's second largest newspaper owner in terms of circulation, with more than 200 newspapers.
Opinions - Help yourself. Is it ever okay to nick an idea? After all, it has a long and venerable history of supporting local news. "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. She was writing about Aldens growing newspaper empire, and wanted to know what it was like to be the last news reporter in town. The consequences can influence national politics as well; an analysis by Politico found that Donald Trump performed best during the 2016 election in places with limited access to local news. 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. Coordinated by . 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. He gained 100 pounds and started grinding his teeth at night. 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. 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.