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Articles tagged Alden Global Capital (67)

Led by risk-averse corporate owners, dozens of the biggest U.S. newspapers have decided their editorials should express opinions on everything except who should be president.
After finding success — and a Pulitzer Prize — in Santa Cruz, Lookout aims to replicate its model in Oregon. “All of these playbooks are at least partially written. You sometimes hear people say, ‘Nobody’s figured it out yet.’ But this is all about execution.”
Under new owner Alden Global Capital, there’s no plan for the future. There’s just revenue extraction for as long as a generation of older newspaper subscribers live to keep paying their bills.
Despite denials, don’t be surprised if control passes from billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong sometimes soon. But it’s not necessarily bad news.
It might not be as mustache-twirling a villain as Alden Global Capital, but its enormous scale has meant enormous losses for local journalism.
“What was so shocking to me is that all the acquisitions led to staffing changes almost immediately and an almost immediate drop in content.”
Newsletter signups went up 60% following the news startup’s wall-to-wall coverage of the Marshall Fire. “We will not survive if we’re not meeting the information needs of our community. It’s not a side project we have. It’s just who we are.”
This time it’s Lee Enterprises in the cross-hairs. Adding it to its empire would leave two American local newspaper giants — Gannett and Alden — and everyone else far behind.
Cerberus Capital Management is entrenched in the military industrial complex and its company trained a journalist’s assassins. It also made possible the takeover of Tribune Publishing.
Tribune board members acted in their own interests, not their newspaper chain’s, while Alden failed to disclose a secret investor meeting and misrepresented its cash position.