As both of The First Street Journal’s regular readers know, I am old fashioned in that I like newspapers as my source of news. I started delivering the morning Lexington Herald and afternoon Lexington Leader when I was in the seventh grade. I use newspapers as my primary sources because, as a mostly conservative writer, using sources which are primarily liberal in orientation eliminates complaints about my choices of sources. And finally, because I am mostly deaf, television news doesn’t work well for me.

For me, the sad decline of newspapers is sad indeed, but, let’s face facts, they are, at heart, still 18^th century technology.

Before I retired, I used to stop at the Turkey Hill in downtown Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, and pick up the newspaper to take to the plant. Liking a (supposedly) good newspaper, I bought The Philadelphia Inquirer rather than the Allentown Morning Call, which annoyed some of my drivers, because the Morning Call was the closest thing to a local paper, but hey, I was the one paying for it!

But, alas! like seemingly every newspaper, the Call had its financial problems, and, no longer independent, it became part of Tribune Publishing in 2000.

The Morning Call, rest of Tribune Publishing’s newspapers now owned by hedge fund Alden; CEO Jimenez is out

By Jon Harris | The Morning Call | May 25, 2021 | 5:44 PM EDT

The Morning Call, which has been covering the Lehigh Valley for more than 125 years, is now owned by the country’s second-largest newspaper owner: a New York hedge fund that has built its media empire — as well as a reputation for deep cost-cutting — in just over a decade.

Alden Global Capital late Monday completed its purchase of the roughly two-thirds of Tribune Publishing shares it didn’t already own, according to a flurry of filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Now privately held and under Alden’s umbrella are some of the country’s most storied newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and the New York Daily News.

The swift closing of the deal came after Tribune shareholders on Friday voted in favor of the transaction, after a competing bid from a Maryland hotel magnate never quite came together. Alden’s deal to buy Tribune for $17.25 a share was announced Feb. 16, but the hedge fund had been interested in acquiring the company since at least fall 2019. In November 2019, Alden bought out Michael Ferro’s 25% stake in the company and quickly built its ownership position to more than 31%.

Douglas M. Arthur, managing director of Huber Research Partners, who tracks the publishing industry, told The Morning Call on Monday that he expects Alden to run Tribune with an emphasis on the company’s finances.

“The current Tribune operating story appears fairly similar to what I believe one should expect once Alden gains control: deep cost cuts, a maximum emphasis on generating cash flow and growing the bottom line,” he said. “The current Tribune management team has been operating this way for several years; certainly its efforts seem to have accelerated as Alden has wielded more influence.”

An immediate change came at the top of Tribune: CEO Terry Jimenez, who was the sole member of Tribune’s board to vote against the Alden deal, “was removed” from his position, according to a regulatory filing.

There’s more at the original.

Alden likes to sell off assets, but what of it? The Lexington Herald-Leader, a McClatchy Company newspaper, outsourced it’s printing to a Gannett facility outside of Louisville in August of 2016, and put it’s building on Midland Avenue up for sale; four years later, the Fayette County Schools decided to buy it. In April of this year, the Inquirer shut down its $299.5 million, in 1992 dollars, Schuylkill Printing Plant, selling the place for a measly $37 million to developer J. Brian O’Neill, outsourcing its printing to, of all places, New Jersey.

And the Morning Call had already done the same thing, selling its building last year. Alden is doing little more than other newspaper companies, because the newspaper business itself hasn’t figured out how to move into the 21^st century.

While the article in the Morning Call was at least somewhat circumspect, The Philadelphia Inquirer, owned not by Tribune Publishing but the non-profit Lenfest Institute, fired with both barrels:

Allentown nonprofits rally to the defense of the Morning Call newsroom

Across the United States, Alden Global Capital has pursued a business model that involves cutting staff to the bone and selling real estate at the publications it acquires.

by Harold Brubaker | May 25, 2021

The news in late 2019 that Alden Global Capital, a New York investment firm known for slashing staff at its newspapers, bought a large stake in Tribune Publishing Co. spurred efforts in Baltimore, Chicago, Allentown, and in other cities to recruit local owners.

Now, Alden is expected to acquire complete control of Tribune on Tuesday, after winning shareholder approval Friday. Advocates for local ownership of Allentown’s Morning Call, which runs one of the largest newsrooms in Pennsylvania, say they plan to keep fighting to save their newspaper despite the odds stacked against them.

“We are all disgusted by the news of what happened and concerned about the future, but we’re not going to give up,” said Kim Schaffer, executive director of Community Bike Works, an Allentown nonprofit that works with youths.

A strong local paper is crucial to the group’s work, said Schaffer, who is among nonprofit leaders brought together by NewsGuild union leaders in Allentown to drum up support for local ownership. .  .  .

Across the United States, Alden Global, which owns about 100 newspapers though the MediaNews Group, has pursued a business model that involves cutting staff to the bone and selling real estate at the publications it acquires.

“They have earned this moniker of being vulture capitalists. We’ve seen in city after city how they absolutely drain the resources of these properties,” said David Boardman, dean of Temple University’s Klein College of Media and Communication.

“While they say many of the right things in terms of the importance of local news and their commitment to it, their record indicates absolute disregard for it,” said Boardman, who is also chair of the Lenfest Institute, which owns The Inquirer.

Alden acquired the Reading Eagle out of bankruptcy two years ago for $5 million. Employees had to reapply for their jobs as the company came out of bankruptcy with 111 jobs, down half from when it entered the process. Last year, Alden sold the Reading Eagle building in downtown Reading for $2.3 million.

I’m sorry, but is that a news report, or an editorial? When the Inquirer shut down its printing plant, 500 people lost their jobs. Philadelphia Newspapers, Inc, which owned both the Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News, a tabloid ‘competitor,’ had 721 newsroom and editorial employees; by 2012, that was down to roughly 320. The Inquirer sold its building to developer Bart Blatstein, and most of the Philadelphia Media Network, then the owner of the Inquirer, Daily News, and philly.com, employees would be moved to the old Strawbridge’s department store on Market Street.

What Mr Brubaker, the article author detailed, was what the owners of the Inquirer had done almost a decade earlier.

I will admit it: I was very used to having grey smudged fingers from reading a print edition newspaper, but I’m also 68 years old. In 1990, the Inquirer had a print circulation of 511,000 on weekdays, and 996,000 for the Sunday edition. By 2019, that circulation was down by 80%. When my generation passes away, the last generation which was really used to print newspapers^[1]Even I don’t read the print newspapers anymore. I live out in the sticks, and there are no newspapers delivered out here. All of my newspaper subscriptions are digital. will have gone to our eternal rewards, and where will print newspapers be then?

There should be a place for print media, even if those print media are online only. Television news, which seems to be doing well, simply does not do much in the way of in-depth coverage, something that print has, and can continue, to do. But my own preference for reading the news rather than watching it on television is pushed by my hearing impairment, and by my need, as a (struggling) writer to be able to copy-and-paste and continually review my sources. I can deride the consumers of television news as low-attention-span, but that isn’t quite fair; they are consuming what their abilities allow them to consume. But, whatever the solution to survival for newspapers in this country is, they haven’t found it yet.