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
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 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
When Alden Global Capital bought Tribune Publishing in May 2021 and slashed Chicago Tribune newsroom staff to bare bones, few media experts and Chicago journalists were surprised. “Years of poor management” at Tribune Publishing paved the way for Alden, said Brant Houston, professor and Knight chair in investigative and enterprise reporting at the University of
“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
