Rebellion Builds at Alden-Owned Newspapers

The journalists of the Denver Post and other newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital have had enough – they're now in open rebellion against the "vulture capitalist" hedge fund.

On May 8, reporters, photographers, and other newsroom personnel from Denver, St. Paul, the Bay Area, Philadelphia, and Kingston, N.Y., many of them members of NewsGuild-CWA, converged on the sidewalks outside Alden's New York City headquarters, where they picketed, chanted, and gave speeches on bullhorns. They demanded that Alden invest in the papers it owns or sell them to someone who will.
 
The hedge fund owns controlling shares in Digital First Media, the country's second-largest newspaper chain, and despite earning far higher-than-average profits, the papers have been laying off staff at twice the industry rate.

"They don't understand what they own. Newspapers are a public trust, and they don't understand that," Pulitzer-Prize winner Thomas Peele of the Mercury News told the crowd.

"Before they took over there were six reporters covering the county I work in – now I'm the only one left," Nick Ferraro, a reporter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press said.

Read more here.

Reporters, photographers, and other newsroom personnel, many of them members of NewsGuild-CWA, rallied outside Alden's New York City headquarters, demanding that Alden invest in the papers it owns or sell them to someone who will.