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
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,
