Hedge Fund Reaches a Deal to Buy Tribune Publishing
The newspaper business has struggled for much of the 21st century as the rise of digital media has profoundly cut revenues generated from print advertising and newsstand sales. At the same time, Facebook and Google have grabbed a large chunk of digital advertising revenue, effectively blocking the industry from one of their traditional sources of cash.
Roughly a quarter of newspapers in the United States, most of them at the end of the week, were closed between 2004 and 2019, while about 50 percent of newspaper jobs were terminated. Hedge funds, however, see newspapers as a possible bargain. With a strict management style, which often means job cuts and shrunken coverage of local news, they have been able to squeeze them in for profit.
In the process, they often annoy their employees. On reporters Denver PostA daily controlled by the Alden Media Company, published a special section of the opinion essay in 2018 that had destroyed the hedge fund, comparing its executives to “vulture capitalists”. Earlier, Alden had ordered The Post to eliminate 30 jobs from an editorial, down to 100 editorial employees, already a significant hiatus of journalists for layoffs and purchases since the firm’s control in 2010 The number was lost.
Alden’s track record does not bode well for Tribune Publishing newspapers, said Penny Abernethy, a former New York Times and Wall Street Journal executive who studied the economics of local media at the University of North Carolina’s School of Journalism. Can.
“Based on the model Alden has used so far, this is a contraction of the industry without significant investment for the future of newspapers,” she said. “One of the problems with these big chains is that they cut the newspapers they serve newspapers, journalists and financially.”
Some journalists who work for the Tribune Publishing Papers – including The Orlando Sentinel and The Hartford Courtant – have tried to convince wealthy beneficiaries to move forward to enable the hedge fund to gain more shares. Last year, two Chicago tribune Journalists sent letters to Chicago publishers, urging them to buy the paper. In Baltimore, reporters supported the effort to interest Mr. Bynum in The Sun.
Randall D. Smith, An onetime Bare Stern partner who runs Alden with Heath Freeman, took a seat on the Tribune Publishing Board last summer. She was the third executive from Alden or affiliated companies to join the seven-member board. Other Alden representatives are Dana Goldsmith Needleman and Christopher Mintian.
