Digital First Media is a subsidiary of a hedge fund called Alden Global Capital. You may not know the name, but newspapers across the country do. After the company bought The Denver Post, the paper’s staff penned a front-page op-edcalling its new owners “vulture capitalists” who had gutted their staff to the point of no return.
Now, that same hedge fund has made a bid to buy Gannett, which owns the Arizona Republic, USA Today and a slew of other major local newspapers around the country. This could create the largest newspaper company in the country, and it has journalists up in arms.
Case in point — Joshua Benton with Harvard’s Nieman Lab, which focuses on journalism standards, said on Twitter: “Digital First will do their best to draw blood from even Gannett’s already desiccated stone.”
This is terrible news; Digital First is the worst owner of newspapers in America and they will do their best to draw blood from even Gannett’s already desiccated stone https://t.co/X9ZllahbNL
— Joshua Benton (@jbenton) January 14, 2019
Cara Lombardo broke this story for the Wall Street Journal. The Show spoke to her asked what this could mean for Gannett and the Arizona Republic.
