MURPHY'S LAW Everyone loses without local support - The Garden City Telegram
I write about this way too often.
Another sale of newspapers to a hedge fund.
In this case, Lee Enterprises has been approached by Alden Global Capital, a New York hedge fund, which publishes 90 daily newspapers and many weeklies.
The sale, if it goes through, will mean the Omaha World Herald, Lincoln Journal Star, Columbus Telegram and many, many others would be owned by a company whose sole intent is to raise revenue by gutting these newspapers.
The fear among employees is their jobs will be lost, and they should be worried.
Alden touts itself as a business that is buying up newspapers when others are running away from them, but that’s quite a spin.
It recently bought Tribune Publishing including the Chicago Tribune and who also owns The Sioux City Journal, The Buffalo News, Denver Post, New York Daily News, Orange County Register, Boston Health and Baltimore Sun.
Many in the newspaper industry, and especially employees, are scared and vehemently against Alden’s proposal.
It was reported that in a letter to Lee Enterprises’ board of directors, Alden proposed a cash purchase at $24 a share, about 30 percent more than the company’s closing share price of $18.49 before the potential acquisition became public. The deal values the company at about $141 million.
Lee Enterprises is no saint. It has done more than its share of putting people out of work, but it is still much better than Alden.
According to reports, Alden, owns roughly 200 publications through its MediaNews Group subsidiary and bought a 6 percent stake in Lee Enterprises in 2020. In its letter to the Lee Enterprises board on Monday, Alden said that, if it became the owner, the chain “would be in a stronger position to maximize its resources and realize strategic value that enhances its operations and supports its employees in their important work serving local communities.”
That translates to more layoffs as it eliminates employees and moves away from print and more and more into online publishing.
The unions for newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises are trying to talk the company out of selling to Alden, which has a well-earned reputation for cutting costs and downsizing staff.
Alden has been called the worst of all newspaper owners. Let that sink it. There are a lot of bad companies in this industry, and Alden is considered the worst of the worst.
Lee Enterprises bought a group of newspapers from Warren E. Buffett, in 2020 for $140 million. Buffett gave up on newspapers and once said most newspapers were “toast.”
If he thought they were toast then, I wonder what he thinks they will be if Alden gets a hold of them, burnt toast.
Love it or hate it, the Internet has changed every aspect of our lives, and admittedly it takes a lot less money to publish online than to print a newspaper.
However, the loss in employees means fewer reporters on the street serving as watchdogs overseeing government and big business.
Having a hedge fund own the media is a terrible thing, it strips away our democracy, our sense that someone is working to tell the truth.
When large companies buy up businesses and its only goal is making money for their board of directors and investors, we all lose.
It is not just in the newspaper industry.
When you bypass our local hardware store, grocery store, restaurants and bars, repair shops and all the other businesses that make up a community, we all lose.
I’m sure many of these newspapers do not have the subscribers or advertisiers they used to, making them vulnerable.
Local businesses that are not supported lose revenue, but we are all lose when we stop supporting one another.
Patrick Murphy, editor-publisher of the Humphrey Democrat and Newman Grove Reporter in Nebraska, is a former assistant managing editor at The Telegram.
source: https://www.gctelegram.com/story/lifestyle/2021/11/26/murphys-law-everyone-loses-without-local-support/8762379002/
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