Some expressed exasperation with the staff of the Chicago Tribune, who were unable to find a single interested local buyer. The New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital - known for slashing its newspapers' budgets to extract escalated profits - won shareholder approval Friday for its $633 million bid to acquire the Tribune Publishing newspaper chain.. I sort of bully people around to get stuff done, he boasted to The Washington Post in 1985. "[26] Shortly thereafter, Alden Global, through its operating unit Strategic Investment Opportunities, filed a lawsuit in state court in Delaware against Lee Enterprises. Its hard to imagine theyd show, anyway. [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. Hes impressed by their journalism, he told me, but his clearest takeaway is that theyre not nearly well funded enough. 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. 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 . But a sense of fatalism permeated the work. What exactly went wrong would become a point of bitter debate among the journalists involved in the campaigns. 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. . The Tribune Tower rises above the streets of downtown Chicago in a majestic snarl of . Financially, it was a raw deal. The Tribune Tower, the iconic former home of the Chicago Tribune, seen in Chicago, Illinois in 2015. At the Suns peak, it employed more than 400 journalists, with reporters in London and Tokyo and Jerusalem. 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 . 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. At the Pioneer Press , where its staff is down to 60, the paper produced a . 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. 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.. [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. They are also defined by an obsessive secrecy. A vulture doesnt hold a wounded animals head underwater. He quotes H. L. Mencken, the papers crusading 20th-century columnist, on the joys of journalism: It is really the life of kings. A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms. But even for a group of journalists, it was tough to keep the publics attention. 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. To him, its the same as oil, the publisher said. He scores big with a bankrupt aerospace manufacturer, and again with a Dallas-based drilling company. He told me it will begin with an annual operating budget of $15 million, unprecedented for an outfit of this kind. Read: What we lost when Gannett came to town. In my many conversations with people who have worked with Freeman, not one could recall seeing him read a newspaper. They call Alden a vulture hedge fund, and I think thats honestly a misnomer, Johnson said. 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. 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. Knight first reported its investment in Alden in 2010, noting the fair market value of its Alden holdings was $13.4 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. When Alden first got into the news business, Freeman seemed willing to indulge some innovation. "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 . Reading these stories now has a certain horror-movie quality: You want to somehow warn the unwitting victims of whats about to happen. Hedge fund Alden's bid to buy Chicago Tribune, other papers approved by 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 California Public Employees Retirement System, a few European banks, and Citigroup and Coca Cola Companys pension funds have all invested in Alden, along with charities such as the Circle of Service Foundation and the Alfred University Endowment. (Freeman has, in the past, disputed Bainums account of the negotiations.) In truth, Freeman didnt seem particularly interested in defending Aldens reputation. Instead, the money was used to finance the hedge funds other ventures. Alden Global Capital pushes to reshape Lee Enterprises board I asked, What is the Foundations perspective on those investments now, as news of Aldens gutting of these newspapers has come to light?. MediaNews Group came out of bankruptcy in March 2010 under the majority ownership of its lenders. 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 . Around this time, Randy becomes preoccupied with privacy. 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 . Glidden had heard rumblings about the papers owners when he first took the job, but he hadnt paid much attention. But maybe the clearest illustration is in Vallejo, California, a city of about 120,000 people 30 miles north of San Francisco. The best architects of the era were invited to submit designs; lofty quotes about the Fourth Estate were selected to adorn the lobby. It's a tangled tale but essentially Asylum produced a film for the McDonald's charitable foundation for Leo. Freeman would show up at business meetings straight from the gym, clad in athleisure, the executive recalled, and would find excuses to invoke his college-football heroics, saying things like When I played football at Duke, I learned some lessons about leadership. (Freeman was a walk-on placekicker on a team that won no games the year he played.). 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. Theres little evidence that Alden cares about the sustainability of its 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. Coppins describes Alden as a specific type of firm: a "vulture hedge fund." NPR's A Martnez talks to McKay Coppins of The Atlantic about how a hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, is buying and then gutting newspapers and the implications for democracy. Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. In a press release Monday, Nov. 22, 2021 Alden said it sent Lee's board a letter with the offer. Meanwhile, reporters fanned out across their respective cities in search of benevolent rich people to buy their newspapers. [29] This attempt also failed, as shareholders returned both directors to the Lee board despite Alden's opposition. She was writing about Aldens growing newspaper empire, and wanted to know what it was like to be the last news reporter in town. [3] [4] With its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in late . You could look to Oakland, California, where the East Bay Times laid off 20 people one week after the paper won a Pulitzer. People who know him described Freemanwith his shellacked curls, perma-stubble, and omnipresent smirkas the archetypal Wall Street frat boy. [22] The appointees to the MediaNews board were replaced by new directors representing the stockholders group led by Alden Global Capital. At one point, I tracked down the photographer whod taken the only existing picture of Smith on the internet. 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. [4], Alden purchased a 5.9-percent stake in Lee Enterprises in January 2020. Eventually he was the only news reporter left on staff, charged with covering the citys police, schools, government, courts, hospitals, and businesses. Alden Global Capital has currently bid to buy all of Tribune. Alden Global Capital makes an offer for Lee Enterprises, a big Smith. Aldens website contains no information beyond the firms name, and its list of investors is kept strictly confidential. Aldens Distressed Opportunities Fund was launched in 2008 and saw astounding success in its first few months, showing returns of more than 30 percent a big rescue for Alden, whose investments in Russia the year before had lost more than 61 percent of their value. Maybe theyd cancel their subscriptions eventually; maybe the papers would fold altogether. The Tribune had been profitable when Alden took over. Hedge fund Alden Global is buying newspaper chain Tribune Publishing - CNN 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 . In the past 15 years, more than a quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business. Alden completed its takeover of the Tribune papers in May. The Ubiquity - The student news site of Quartz Hill High School Since Alden's . By McKay Coppins. 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.. Alden Global Capital, the hedge fund that owns The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press in Virginia, has proposed purchasing Lee Enterprises, the Iowa-based owner of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and most other major Virginia newspapers, for approximately $144 million, Alden announced Monday. Even as Aldens portfolio grew, Freeman rarely visited his newspapers. 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. To David Simon, the whimpering end of The Baltimore Sun feels both inevitable and infuriating. 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.