Digest 4/12/2021

Billionaires push to save Tribune from Big Scary Hedge Fund, Gawker lives (again), and more.

THE FIGHT FOR TRIBUNE PUBLISHING

In November of 2019, hedge fund Alden Global Capital became the larger shareholder in Tribune Publishing, the parent company of eleven papers including the Baltimore Sun and the New York Daily News, increasing its stake to 32%. Journalists who work for Tribune newspapers began sounding the alarm;the hedge fund is a villainous presence in print media, described by Vanity Fair as a “vampire that bleeds newspapers dry” and “a synonym for evil.” This reputation was cemented by its 2018 decimation of The Denver Post, which inspired a widely publicized staff rebellion. 

Terrified by the prospect of an Alden takeover, journalists at the Baltimore Sun started seeking a local owner to outbid the hedge fund in early 2020. When a local politician advised them to treat their quest as a political campaign, they launched Save Our Sun, a national effort that included other Tribune papers. Now, after roughly a year of organizing, there are signs the Sun staffers may succeed — the effort drew the attention of Maryland’s Choice Hotels International chairman Stewart Bainum Jr. and billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, who have put together an all-cash proposal to buy Tribune Publishing out from under Alden. The hedge fund has already made a $630 million offer to buy the company outright, which earlier this year seemed like a done deal. But now that Bainum and Wyss have made a better offer, it has to be considered by Tribune’s board, stalling the sale to Alden.

“It’s not over until it’s over,” said Scott Dance, environmental reporter for the Baltimore Sun, who has been chair of the guild at the Sun for six and a half years. Reporters are waiting anxiously for the battle to play out — they could learn of the fate of their paper in weeks, or it might take months. 

“We definitely feel like we have momentum on our side, and we can’t believe we’ve gotten as far as we have,” said Dance. “It started out as this little Baltimore thing, like, ‘There are some people in Baltimore with some money who are going to try and buy the Sun, let’s try and see what happens.’” A former Baltimore city executive passionate about local news had initially tried and failed to buy the Sun; earlier this year Bainum made a failed bid for the Sun and other Maryland papers, and now has teamed up with Wyss to bid for all of Tribune. 

The campaign to save Tribune shows a path forward for local newspapers — philanthropy. It has become a trend for rich individuals with disposable income to invest in media, and specifically local news, which is a dwindling resource with proven benefits for their communities. (“Why buy a yacht when you can buy a newspaper?” asked a New York Times headline a few days ago, citing the bid to save Tribune and noting Jeff Bezos’ purchase of the Washington Post, and Red Sox owner John Henry’s purchase of the Boston Globe.) 

So far, finding a sympathetic billionaire buyer seems to be the only viable alternative for newspapers that are in danger of being sucked dry by vampire hedge funds. Of course, this is far from a risk-free solution. When a publication’s fate is in the hands of a single billionaire there is always the possibility they will grow tired of it in the future (as Laurene Powell Jobs did with California Sunday). What’s remarkable about the potential Tribune deal is that the rich benefactors don’t seem interested in making money off their ownership. When Bainum made an initial offer to buy a handful of Tribune newspapers earlier this year, he proposed running them as a nonprofit (that deal fell through, leading him to partner with Wyss and make an offer to buy the whole company).

Bainum has expressed plans to run the newspapers under his ownership (the Sun and other Maryland publications) as nonprofits; he plans to sell other Tribune papers to local owners. “It could be huge for local news if [Bainum] succeeds and he tries things the way he’s talking about trying them,” said Dance. “That would have big ripple effects on other newspaper chains potentially or other news outlets, just to see somebody giving it a try as a nonprofit…We really hope this campaign that we’ve started inspires other movements around the country.”

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STUDY HALLERS RECOMMEND: REBECCA I have been suffering from the COVID-era affliction of being unable to finish a book, an occupational hazard for someone who reviews books for a living. I’ve slowly dipped a toe back in with online fanfic, sci-fi, and fantasy, and then a month ago, picked up Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. If you are building a bridge back to reading, I cannot recommend Rebecca enough. The perfect midpoint between camp and literature, it is a masterful novel and also extremely silly; I found myself wandering around my apartment muttering things like, “That’s not how the first Mrs. de Winter made a mezcal gimlet.” If possible, get a beaten-up vintage version with marginalia from ThriftBooks for maximum mystique. — Erin Schwartz

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COMINGS AND GOINGS

— Study Hall staff writer Allegra Hobbs has announced her impending departure (her final digest will go out May 3) marking the start of a period of prolonged mourning at this very media company. 

— NYT social strategy editor Hannah Wise is going to head up McClatchy’s central region audience development work. 

— Charlie Warzel is leaving the New York Times to start his own Substack, Galaxy Brain. He’s joined by Yahoo News’ Washington correspondent Hunter Walker and Ask Polly advice writer Heather Havrilesky, reports Ben Smith. 

— Also hidden in Smith’s piece about Substack is the revelation that that long-dormant Gawker reboot (early efforts of which blew up spectacularly back in 2019) is, in fact, proceeding with former Gawker writer and former The Outline editor Leah Finnegan.

— The Teen Vogue drama has settled (maybe?) with the announcement of Danielle Kwateng as executive editor. 

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— The New York Times published a deep dive on internal conflict at the Wall Street Journal, where a “special innovation team” is spearheading a push to bring the stodgy paper mostly read by rich old white men into the future (present?) with more coverage of things like income inequality and social justice. Predictably, this isn’t sitting well with everyone at the Journal, with some seeing  this effort as a capitulation to the wokes.

— Just when you thought there could be no more Substack discourse, here comes Ben Smith with a scoop-packed column revealing the company is giving six-figure advances to both Daniel and Grace Lavery. (Not to brag but I did predict in the last digest that Substack would offer big deals to trans authors in an attempt to smooth over conflict around the transphobes that use its platform.) 

— A leaked email sent to Insider staff details the company’s strategy of doling out “impact points,” which are intended to measure a story’s impact beyond the usual metrics like traffic or subscriptions. Among other things, impact points are awarded for aggregation by “titles with a great deal of prestige” (but NOT local newspapers!!!) and social shares from certain media reporters (but NOT Max Tani!!!). Obviously the email was received with great amusement by media Twitter, but here’s a defense from media critic and former Business Insider writer Mark Stenberg, who argues they “have just as many merits and demerits as any other individual metric” and convey the fundamental truth of media that “people follow people.”

— Atlantic Media announced a pretty alarming security breach — an “unauthorized actor” accessed the company’s servers. The breach doesn’t affect subscribers, customers or clients but has put employees and some independent contractors at risk, since tax documents were briefly accessible.

— Twitter has held talks in recent months to acquire Clubhouse in a $4 billion deal. Two very toxic social media platforms under the same ownership? That’s amore.