Tag: journalism

Alden and other venture capitalists threaten journalism’s role in democracy

By Margot Susca From “Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy” by Margot Susca. Copyright 2024 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway had a dalliance with the chain newspaper market, acquiring in 2012

The Davids fighting Goliath in West Virginia

A feisty team of lawyers and tenants in Appalchian mobile home parks are fighting Alden’s owners — and sometimes, they’re winning. News analysis By Julie Reynolds In Mercer County, West Virginia, Valeria Steele is proud of her home in Elk View Estates, a community she says used to be “such a nice place to live.”

Newspapers are vanishing, leaving democracy at risk

Newspapers are dying. Young people aren’t reading them. Predatory hedge funds are buying them up, laying off reporters, milking them for profits and cutting home delivery. The result is that democracy is losing its eyes and ears and maybe its conscience.  That was a theme of Rick Goldsmith’s new documentary on the predatory consequences of