Category: LEDE

Lee Enterprises after Alden

“The model is simple,” declared The Atlantic in its cover story for the November 2021 issue. “Gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring out as much cash as possible.” The author of the piece, Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins, was writing about Alden Global Capital LLC, the widely-feared buyout

The Alden effect – Nonprofit news on the rise

In its voracious drive to apparently consume as many U.S. newspapers as possible, the so-called vulture capitalist Alden Global Capital recently bought the San Diego Union Tribune and a group of associated newsrooms in southern California. Reports on the purchase focused on the inevitable results of Alden Global acquiring newsrooms: immediate decimation of the staff,

Anatomy of Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink

By Rick Goldsmith © 2023 In 2018, hedge funds had been scarfing up newspapers right and left for more than a decade.  But outside of a handful of journalists covering the newspaper industry, no one knew anything about this new brand of media moguls: who they were, why they were buying into a declining industry,