Do you give a damn about communities and their local papers?
That is the subject of an email sent to the “publisher” of our local and regional newspapers just now. To econdra@21st-centurymedia.com
Here’s the email:
To whom it may concern:
From Main Line Media News to the Daily Local and beyond we have to ask if you give a damn about our communities and local newspapers?
Most news is not covered because you don’t provide resources as in financial to actually hire reporters, keep them, etc.
Hedge funds shouldn’t own our media outlets, yet they do.
Are you just driving our papers into the ground for good or is it just convenient to keep them on life support to show a loss on some hedge fund’s balance sheet?
Why were all of these local papers purchased and assembled under MNG Enterprises, Digital First Media or Media News Group or whatever you’re calling yourselves under Alden Global Capital if you didn’t intend to have any newspapers survive?
I have never thought that this was a business, decision, or merely a predatory profit seeking enterprise, or even good old fashioned corporate raiders. I have always felt that this was personal, like a newspaper wronged this hedge fund someone once upon a time, and is that closer to the truth?I have always wondered what the real impetus was for all of this and why someone would want to destroy so many local and regional newspapers?
I get the face of journalism has changed, but the need for it in local communities has increased. You are doing harm to local communities all over Southeastern PA and beyond. And to the future of journalism.
The editor you have serving our local papers doesn’t seem to get what is important to our communities or what areas the papers actually serve. Maybe they are overwhelmed or just burnt out? After all, you have local papers which once had multiple reporters and editors and associate editors and now papers often have one maybe two reporters and no more newsrooms really.If you’re going to continue to own newspapers, why not try to run them the right way?
Thanks for your time.
This is the literally only person I could get an email address for having to do with our newspapers above the local editor. That one in Norristown or something. She has no power, she’s just a worker bee. It’s very odd to have an utterly unapproachable local editor, truthfully.
Of course one the ones I would really like to email is William Dean Singleton:
Also it would be nice to talk to Alden Global Capital the hedge fund that owns them all:
(From Wikipedia🙂
Alden Global Capital is a hedge fund based in Manhattan, New York City. It was founded in 2007 by Randall D. Smith.[2] Its managing director is Heath Freeman.[2][3] By mid-2020, Alden had stakes in roughly two hundred American newspapers.[4][5] The company added more newspapers to its portfolio in May 2021 when it purchased Tribune Publishing and became the second-largest newspaper publisher in the United States.[6][7][8][9]
The company operates its media holdings through Digital First Media(DFM), which it acquired in 2010 after DMG’s parent company, MediaNews Group, declared bankruptcy.[10] With its acquisition of Tribune Publishing in late May 2021, Alden is collectively the second-largest owner of newspapers in the United States, as calculated by average daily print circulation, second only to Gannett.[11]
In November 2021, Alden Global Capital made an offer to purchase Lee Enterprises for $24 a share in cash, or about $141 million.[12] Lee owns daily newspapers in 77 markets in 26 states, and about 350 weekly and specialty publications.[13]
Newspapers in Alden’s portfolio include Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Boston Herald, The Mercury News, East Bay Times, The Orange County Register, and Orlando Sentinel.[14][15]
Alden has a reputation for sharply cutting costs by reducing the number of journalists working on its newspapers.[16][17] In March 2018, Margaret Sullivan, the media columnist for The Washington Post, called Alden “one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism”[18] and Vanity Fairdubbed Alden the “grim reaper of American newspapers.”[19]
These people have eviscerated our local papers. They have removed our local and regional news voices. They have removed our voices by association.
So probably sending this email will do absolutely no good. But maybe if lots of people sent emails it would do some good? Or at least attract other media, who might write about these vultures, eviscerating and disemboweling and swallowing whole our local and regional newspapers, and even some bigger ones.
These people are destroying the future of journalism. And as much as people want to complain about their local papers, we need them. So Alden, this post is for you.
#FreeOurNewspapers