March 28, 2024

Hedge Funds Duel in Bankruptcy Court Over McClatchy Newspapers

The Alden-owned MediaNews Group has drastically cut costs at newspapers it manages. In 2018, staff members at The Denver Post, a MediaNews Group daily, openly rebelled, publishing a special section filled with articles critical of ownership. “If Alden isn’t willing to do good journalism here,” The Post’s editorial board wrote in the lead editorial, “it should sell The Post to owners who will.”

Alden owns 32 percent of Tribune Publishing, the chain that operates The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and newspapers in nine other major metropolitan areas in the United States. Last week the hedge fund increased its influence on Tribune Publishing when it gained a third seat on its seven-member board. Alden also has an interest in another newspaper chain, Lee Enterprises, and its MediaNews Group controls roughly 200 publications.

From 2004 to 2019, roughly half of all newspaper jobs in the United States were eliminated as the cumulative weekday circulation of print papers fell to 73 million from 122 million, according to a University of North Carolina study.

At the same time, advertising revenue fell sharply as readers gave up print newspapers, a longtime home of lucrative retail ads and classified notices, in favor of digital devices. Google and Facebook came to dominate the online ad market, hampering publishers’ attempts to generate the necessary revenue from digital ads.

Wall Street ownership of newspapers has become common, and Alden helped drive that trend since the Great Recession, when it started grabbing stakes in distressed news media companies.

Alden’s emergency motion was first reported by McClatchy DC, a news site staffed by McClatchy journalists in Washington.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/business/media/mcclatchy-bankruptcy-chatham-alden.html

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