21 November 2021,

In Northern California, a combined editorial staff of 16 regional newspapers had reportedly been slashed from 1,000 to a mere 150. Tampa Bay Times sells printing plant to Alden Global Capital's real estate arm. Publicly Traded Print and Digital 2.5M daily circulation in eight states and that means nearly 75M readers a month. They reside in a West Palm Beach mansion a few miles north of Trump’s Mar-A-Lago, and they own around a dozen other mansions — two in the Hamptons and the rest scattered around West Palm Beach. The Work Ahead focuses on how to rebuild the links among work, opportunity, and economic security for all Americans. Russ Smith, a conservative . The writers in this volume recall the standards that made the Sun and other fine independent newspapers a bulwark of civic life for so long. Newspapers were a good investment, owing to a largely captive market of local advertising, and as they maintained their position as a highly lucrative industry into the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s, these families turned to the public markets and bought even more newspapers. “Under Alden’s tenure,” Reynolds wrote last year of her former employer, the Monterey Herald, in a Newsweek op-ed that Elizabeth Warren tweeted out, “layoffs and attrition accelerated at breakneck speed. (No dice.) It’s not clear whether the Smiths have met President Trump. Alden is the hedge fund most recently described as “the gelatinous cube scouring the news industry’s dungeon.” Or, more simply, as a “destroyer of newspapers.”. "I like to show these feeding bass a larger . In The Wired City, Dan Kennedy tells the story of the New Haven Independent, a nonprofit community website in Connecticut at the leading edge of reinventing local journalism. Instead of a story a day, reporters scrambled to crank out two or three because there were fewer and fewer of us. Political content without the propaganda and other disinformation. I've written my last column for the . “The best outcome would be a local buyer who would put some money back into the papers,” he said. It generates value for investors while creating jobs and wealth for a broad spectrum of individuals and entities.”. June 2019: The minutes tick away toward six pm. Alden owner is deeply in Trump’s camp now, The Finance Curse: How Global Finance is Making Us All Poorer, a convenient way to circumvent contribution limits, NewsGuild urges public pension funds to divest from Cerberus, citing the firm’s role in the destruction of local news, FROM NIEMAN LAB: The “shadow bank” that — with the help of public pension funds — is aiding the destruction of local news, Tribune papers lose more than 89 positions under staff buyouts, From Nieman Lab: Alden Global Capital and Tribune’s board are dancing at the edge of the law, Patrick Soon-Shiong has some explaining to do. The Chicago Tribune is a conservative newspaper, no use denying that, and has been for well over a century, so it's no surprise to see its editorial page arguing against a graduated income tax. He then earned an MD from Wake Forest University and an MBA from Wake F. This is somebody who, any day of the week, will buy or sell something based on what’s going to make the most money. Share. At the Baltimore Sun, journalists have been reaching out to deep-pocketed individuals who have, in the past, expressed interest in buying the 183-year-old broadsheet. This book aims both to help readers understand the current state of news media through theory and provide practical techniques and skills to partake in constructive social journalism. The ink wasn't dry, but the hushed deal to finance Alden Global Capital's takeover of Tribune Publishing fell quickly into place in May. As Nicholas Shaxson, author of “The Finance Curse: How Global Finance is Making Us All Poorer,” recently told DFMworkers.org, Alden is “about the most opaque” hedge fund he’s ever seen. But when Alden seized those two board seats in early December, journalists knew what was in store, because its reputation as a rapacious vulture fund was by then well-known. MNG Enterprises, Inc., doing business as Digital First Media and MediaNews Group, is a Denver, Colorado-based newspaper publisher owned by Alden Global Capital.The company has been growing its portfolio and as of May 2021, owns over 100 newspapers and 200 assorted other publications. So what prompted the Smiths to shell out $100,000 to the president and his party in August? They realize that what they’re trying to pull off is probably a long shot. The coronavirus . “Look, We’re in the Media Business”: Why BuzzFeed Ben Bolted to the, reportedly been slashed from 1,000 to a mere 150, apparently now just four reporters covering a total of 34 cities throughout the region, struggling to fulfill its pension obligations and avoid going bankrupt, photo of himself standing on the edge of the Freeman property, Barack and Michelle have gone multiplatform, Trump’s Ukraine goons against Marie Yovanovitch. The following year, Alden bought MediaNews Group, and the slashing began. Alden Global Capital, the Hedge Fund Killing Newspapers - From: The Atlantic - CMBA News and Information At the time, private equity firms were beginning to react to Warren’s legislation, and they weren’t happy about it. We described Alden’s gutting of its newspapers and the disastrous effects this had on communities served by the Digital First Media chain (officially known as MNG Enterprises). The newspaper business is at a perilous crossroads. This essential book explains why, and how today’s new crop of media moguls might help it to survive. Tribune publishes the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Baltimore Sun, Orlando Sentinel, Sun-Sentinel . None of that sounds particularly comforting to journalists at Tribune Publishing, who are in the middle of a round of buyouts that they fear will be followed by additional cuts if Alden gains more control. Freeman is equally mysterious to journalists who work at Alden papers, many of whom have only learned about him via Julie Reynolds’s dispatches for the NewsGuild. But, as a media outlet dealing in free speech and the freedom of the press, it might at least be expected to play fair and argue facts, not muddy the . Christopher Minnetian, president of Randall Smith’s “family investment firm,” Smith Management LLC, gave $10,800 to the Trump campaign for the 2016 election. Sometimes it felt like their hearts were in the right place. 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 . Alden Global Capital has been the owner of the St. Paul Pioneer Press since 2012, since when it has laid off several dozen reporters amid significant newsroom cuts, despite the newspaper posting double-digit profit margins in recent years. Shareholders of Tribune Publishing, one of the country's largest newspaper chains, on Friday approved a takeover by hedge fund Alden Global Capital.Alden, which already owned one-third of Tribune, now takes full control of the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and other Tribune papers in a deal worth roughly $630 million. The union has held public forums to . This piece goes into extensive detail on Alden Global Capital, the secretive hedge fund that is notorious for buying up newspapers left and right across the US. In that capacity he got to know a handful of MediaNews Group executives in the thin layer of management under Freeman. The News closed in 2009. (Randall Smith started making these purchases in 2013, a year after he acquired the Digital First Media newspaper chain, spending $57 million on 16 mansions. On a sweltering July afternoon last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren unveiled proposed legislation aimed at making hedge funds and private equity firms more transparent and accountable. Above all, Marx and Jackson begged Freeman for some face time—“to talk with us or with other newsroom leaders about your beliefs and business plans as you shape the future of Tribune Publishing.… We ask if we can host you for a meeting here in Chicago, go on our own dime to NYC or visit with you on the phone.”, The letter concluded, “We do not write this letter to advance a news story, or to save our own jobs. Prompted by yet another painful downsizing in the nine-time Pulitzer Prize–winning Post’s newsroom, which had already dwindled to under a hundred journlists, the fierce but futile uprising brought journalists out of their offices and into the streets. I asked Brandt, who is 55 and makes $46,000 a year, what’s stopping him from taking the company up on one of those buyouts. It was stripped directly from Digital First newspapers via two subsidiaries created by Alden: Strategic Investment Opportunities LLC and MNG Investment Holdings LLC. Alden Global Capital, the largest shareholder of Tribune Publishing, said Thursday it offered to take full control of the newspaper chain in a deal that values the company at $520.6 million. Looking for more? Freeman took one look at Brandt and his #NewsMatters shirt and signaled for the woman to show him back to the door. Even in the close-mouthed world of hedge fund investment, Randall Smith, the principal of Alden Global Capital, gives new meaning to the euphemism "low profile." . In this book, three Chicago Tribune reporters who covered the Laurie Dann tragedy have pulled together all the available police evidence, unearthed valuable psychiatric information, and interviewed at length scores of people who knew Dann, ... And it is about how you will be defined and remembered as a corporate steward -- it is about your legacy. The Trib and other papers part of Tribune Publishing were purchased last month by Alden Global Capital, known for gutting newspapers. It’s hard to say what prompted this sudden interest in the president’s 2020 race considering Smith didn’t donate at all to Trump’s 2016 efforts. 17:50. Dorsey earned a BA in Spanish from Duke University. But eventually there came a point where those who remained had gone through so many downsizings that they stopped asking, “What else can they cut?” Because the answer to that question was, as Brandt put it, “There’s no bottom.” At the Mercury, the newsroom once had about 30 journalists. In 2009, the Great Recession obliterated nearly 20% of daily advertising revenue in a single year, according to Doctor, a wound from which the industry would never recover (with the exception of deeply resourced brands with massive national and international readerships, like the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post). The Smiths’ $100,000 came in the form of two $50,000 contributions to Trump Victory. L ike a less messy, urbane deer season, the media partake in an annual tradition: the hunt for who killed America's newspapers. He joins John Williams to describe the two men behind Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that purchased Chicago Tribune, causing many long-adored columnists and reporters to leave. The Daily News is advertised at a newsstand on July 23, 2018 in New York City. But Alden’s track record — whether it takes over newspapers, shoe stores or pharmacies — proves otherwise. Then the hot water in the bathrooms was turned off. A New York Times bestselling series A USA TODAY bestselling series A California Young Reader Medal–winning series Dark schemes unfold and Sophie’s loyalty is pushed to the limit in this thrilling fifth book in the Keeper of the Lost ... “But we still have hope that somebody, or a group of people, can step in. It was a high-margin business, about 80% dependent on advertising, and it grew steadily along with the national economy. These papers have always looked at things and said, ‘We’ve gotta keep the revenue we’ve got.’ But that’s expensive revenue, and by spending all that money trying to keep it, they didn’t have any money to invest in the digital future. In 1958, the Detroit News described itself as fiscally conservative but liberal on issues of personal liberties, which is, of course, the ideals held by the Libertarian Party. Both provided Alden's office in Manhattan's Lipstick Building as their address. The explosive story of the Republican Party's intensely dramatic and fractious efforts to find its way back to unity and national dominance. After the 2012 election, the GOP was in the wilderness. Lost and in disarray. Kass, 64, was the latest to opt for a voluntary buyout offered by Alden Global Capital, the New York-based hedge fund known for severe cost-cutting at newsrooms across the country. This is a real threat to democracy because hedge funds and private equity firms have a track record of cutting the reporting staff of local newsrooms to increase profits. The gutters were never repaired, and staff creatively arranged house plants to try to soak up the leaks.”, These were the types of horror stories that flashed through Marx’s and Jackson’s minds as they sent that letter to Freeman, the notoriously elusive Alden boss, a few days before Christmas. Of course, nothing restricts the RNC from campaigning on Trump’s behalf. Now, more than 90 years later, the Chicago Tribune has uncovered photographs and newspaper clippings telling the story of the four women who inspired [the play and musical]. In December, Alden Global Capital, a New York City hedge fund and media investor, confirmed, in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that it was looking to acquire Tribune Publishing, which owns the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the Hartford Courant, as well as other local newspapers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Florida. Alden Global Capital had recently purchased a nearly one-third stake in the Sun's parent company, Tribune Publishing, . Buying up newspapers and bleeding them dry has been the preferred strategy of Randall D. Smith, the head of Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund that shuns publicity even as it has . Freeman is said to be the kind of person who makes a demand, listens to the counterpoint, and then reasserts his demand. As a privately held “vulture” hedge fund, we don’t know who Alden’s investors are. Local journalism is on the verge of extinction and this is bad for democracy. This book explains why. This is about the role of regional newsrooms and the Fourth Estate in American democracy. Trump supporter and Labor Secretary nominee Andy Puzder wrote in the Wall Street Journal that “The senator is trying to set private equity up as a boogeyman to fear. In Losing the News, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex S. Jones offers a probing look at the epochal changes sweeping the media, changes which are eroding the core news that has been the essential food supply of our democracy. The Chicago Tribune faces a potentially bleak future after the announcement of its likely sale to Alden Global Capital. Even though it’s a lot less than it used to be, you can make a lot of money in the short term.”, Among the various financial players that are now pulling levers in the newspaper space, Alden holds the distinction of being the most repugnant to the journalism community. Nothing could be further from the truth. The stock-for-debt swap had initially involved dozens of entities, but over time, a substantial block of the stock ended up in the hands of one group: Alden Global Capital. Indeed, newspaper analyst Ken Doctor told me the Gannett–GateHouse combo was merely “a prelude to more roll-up.” As he observed at the end of last year, “The impact is obvious. I should note here that I, together with reporter Evan Brandt of the Pottstown (PA) Mercury spoke at a press conference about The Stop Wall Street Looting Act. There is no contact information—or any information at all, really—on Alden’s website. “This place pretty much gives Alden a 20% profit margin. Less than two weeks later, Alden Global Capital co-founder Randall Smith gave $50,000 to Donald Trump’s “Trump Victory” fund. (One option being considered is trying to put together a group of investors who Subscription fees and advertising generate revenue. Both provided Alden's office in Manhattan's Lipstick Building as their address. On December 20, two Chicago Tribune journalists sent a letter to a hedge fund manager who holds the fate of their newspaper in his hands. 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 . The steep terms have led some Wall Street types to suspect that Apollo, which is simultaneously buying up dozens of local TV stations to compete with Sinclair and Fox, will end up as the owner of Gannett in the long run. Could it be that Smith, like Puzder, fears that legislators’ efforts to make private equity more transparent are actually a conspiracy to “punish the successful?”, Puzder maintains that private equity’s goal is “always growth and value creation, not bankruptcy.”. The alternative is a ghost version of the Chicago Tribune—a newspaper that can no longer carry out its essential watchdog mission.”, Marx and Jackson told me they had reached out to “at least 50 people,” sending emails, placing calls, and, in some cases, hand-delivering letters to “anybody who might be interested in either buying Tribune Publishing or buying the Chicago Tribune alone,” said Marx. The conservative columnist says he was "invited to stay on" after the paper was bought by Alden Global Capital. There was a round of layoffs in December, and the CEO of Gannett Media Corp., Paul Bascobert, acknowledged that there would be more to come as they assess overlap and redundancies and such. By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers. Here is a list of Chicago Tribune editorial employees who left under the June buyout offer of owner Alden Global Capital, based on information from Chicago Tribune Guild and other sources. Read More. May. We described Alden’s gutting of its newspapers and the disastrous effects this had on communities served by the Digital First Media chain (officially known as MNG Enterprises). Marx and Jackson’s campaign may be quixotic, but it’s not naïve. Of course, nothing restricts the RNC from campaigning on Trump’s behalf. This article first appeared on Feb. 4, 2020, on the website of dfmworkers.org. Source: Chicago Sun-Times Tribune Publishing directors said Friday shareholders approved Alden Global Capital's offer to buy the company, heralding a new and uneasy era at the Chicago-based media company and turning aside pleas from its journalists and others who made opposition to the sale into a fight for the soul of journalism. This report is the fourth on the state of local news produced by the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Private equity is an overwhelmingly positive component of the free-enterprise system. They reside in a West Palm Beach mansion a few miles north of Trump’s Mar-A-Lago, and they own around a dozen other mansions — two in the Hamptons and the rest scattered around West Palm Beach. The Expanding News Desert documents the continuing loss of papers and readers, the consolidation in the industry, and the social, political and economic consequences for thousands of communities throughout the country. Now that it’s bought up a third of Tribune Publishing, Alden has finagled two board seats and within weeks, the company implemented mass buyouts. The deal would create one of the largest newspaper operators in the . That’s when disaster struck. Cuts to the newsroom, advertising, and circulation departments of these papers seemed to come slowly at first. This time around, McKay Coppins of The Atlantic zeroes in on Alden Global Capital, a vulture-like hedge fund that treats newspapers like an extractive industry, picking at corpses until only the skeleton is left.. Coppins's general argument is good — Alden has . In her Washington Post column, media critic Margaret Sullivan called Alden “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism.”, So chilling is the Alden effect that the NewsGuild, a union for newspaper journalists, began paying an investigative reporter (and Alden refugee) named Julie Reynolds to cover the firm as a beat. And then there’s Marx and Jackson’s efforts at the Chicago Tribune. Subscribe. The week the Smiths made their donations to Trump was also the week the Gannett and GateHouse newspaper chains merged, a bitter pill for Alden because its own takeover of Gannett was thwarted earlier in the year. As The Sunlight Foundation reports, “In the majority opinion in McCutcheon, Justice Samuel Alito dismissed concerns that joint fundraising committees would be used to solicit massive checks for individual candidates as ‘wild hypotheticals.’”. Patrick and Michele Soon Shiong who owns the LA Times owns 24% of Tribune. “If you reduce your expense base,” said Poynter’s Edmonds, “and you hold off on the kinds of investments that you’ll need to be in business 5 or 10 years from now, newspapers still make money. Journalists of South Bend Tribune unionize, adding momentum to organizing surge, The Finance Curse: How Global Finance is Making Us All Poorer, a convenient way to circumvent contribution limits, New York Times workers protest at the company’s doorstep, Staffers at Warehouse Workers for Justice are forming a union, Full-time faculty at Point Park University ratifies new contract, Politico, E&E staffers win union recognition, Union members at NY Times’ Wirecutter announce walkout during Black Friday week. This was then divvied up between the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, with a note on the Federal Election Commission’s site that the RNC cut came from “Trump Victory.” The total of $5600 each from Barbara and Randall Smith that ended up in “Trump For President” is the maximum allowed by law for an individual candidate, so the rest went to the RNC. Another nail has just been hammered into the coffin of the so-called mainstream media, an institution I like to call the lamestream media. (Charles Rex Arbogast/AP) By Margaret Sullivan. The November issue of The Atlantic takes a deep dive into a growing phenomenon, hedge funds taking over and gutting local papers across the country, leaving news deserts in their wake. 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 . Water, Civilisation and Power in Sudan offers an alternative account of how water policy, violence, and economic modernisation are linked. It would eventually inspire a national effort to keep nearly a dozen newspapers owned by the same chain from being bought by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund with a singular reputation for . June 17, 2016 Scores of journalists and concerned citizens gathered in front of the Denver Post building today to protest staff cuts orchestrated by New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital. At the heart of Union Atlantic lies a test of wills between a retired history teacher, Charlotte Graves—who has suddenly begun to hear her two dogs speaking to her in the voices of Cotton Mather and Malcolm X—and an ambitious young ... 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 .

Wrestling Clubs In Florida, Rahul Vaidya And Disha Parmar Wedding, Payment Services Regulations 2017, Crossword Clue Bandage, Amsterdam Weather 26th September, Texas Esl Referral Process, Certain Websites Not Loading On Wifi Iphone, Undomiciled Medical Definition,

tim bradley house near singapore