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The News Guild is launching an on-line campaign, accompanied by demonstrations around the country, against a hedge fund, Alden Capital, that, in so many words, devours newspapers.
“We’re declaring war,” News Guild-CWA President Bernie Lunzer said in an e-mail to union activists.
“A few years ago a secretive Wall Street hedge fund called Alden Global Capital bought up Digital First Media, the company that employs nearly 900 people at 12 papers, in units that once had at least a thousand more Guild-CWA members. DFM is the second largest newspaper company in the country, and highly profitable.
“Yet some members haven’t seen raises in 10 years and many have lost their jobs — all while Wall Street vulture hedge fund Alden enriches the coffers of a privileged few by plundering the 200 newspapers it owns…gutting news coverage in those communities.”
That gutting included the closure, in April, of the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, an award-winning daily in a majority-minority city of 400,000.
DFM combined the Tribune with three other papers into the East Bay Times, which it claims will be a regional publication for the San Francisco Bay area. It assigned one reporter to cover Oakland. It also sold off DFM papers’ buildings, reaping millions of dollars for Alden investors, Bay Area media report.
To “ramp up pressure on DFM,” the News Guild will “go after Alden, since it’s the one really calling the shots,” Lunzer said, starting with the protests and the online petition, available on the union’s website.
There will also be a Twitter campaign under the hashtag #AldenExposed.
“This is no easy campaign. Hedge funds are notoriously unaccountable and secretive, and this one is especially so. But we have to take this fight on, and fight it in a highly visible way until our basic demands are met. We know that every newspaper publisher is going to be watching, and we’ll make sure they hear about it,” Lunzer adds.