Next up: Chicago Tribune

Another one bites the dust.
Tribune Publishing’s largest shareholder, Michael Ferro, sells 25% stake to hedge fund Alden Capital

 

And seven other outlets. Not just Chicago Tribune.

Only question is the timeline of when the next round of gutting starts.

Another FU from sexual predator and anti-Semite Michael Ferro, selling his shares to those fucking bloodsuckers.

 

I was just on Google News. They had two headlines up on this. Something of a difference in tone.

From the second link:

"Ferro — who had enthralled the industry in his relatively brief tenure heading Tribune, and who had brought such laughter into the world through his gift of Tronc — had pulled off a magnificent disappearing act. To his would-be peers in the industry, frequent targets of his disdain, he’s departing appropriately enough, with a signature fuck-you. Who better to sell his Tribune stake — the one his group of Chicago investors had bought at bargain-basement prices, and which, ridiculously, gave him effective control of Tribune — to than the only man in the industry more reviled: Freeman, whose Alden has become the face of bloodless strip-mining of American newspapers and their communities."

Hedge fund Alden becomes Tribune’s largest shareholder

Newsonomics: By selling to America’s worst newspaper owners, Michael Ferro ushers the vultures into Tribune

 

Ferro’s an asshole but it’s not his fault that newspapers are dead outside of the big boys.

 

Get off Google News, dude. They are a part of the problem.

 

It's kind of his fault for mismanaging the company and pretty much stealing tens of millions of dollars after leaving.

 

In other news, three Ohio papers are getting cut to three-day publication schedule as a result of Cox Media's sale of those papers and TV/radio properties to Apollo Global Management.

https://nypost.com/2019/11/26/three-ohio-papers-to-be-cut-to-clear-3-1b-apollo-purchase/

 

Paywalled for me, but the headline is bad enough.
WSJ News Exclusive | Alden Global Seeks to Buy Tribune Publishing

 

You cannot save an industry by killing it

 

There isn’t any industry to save.

 

This.

I get as angry as anyone over the asshole vultures who pick apart what's left of newspapers, mostly because I think there's absolutely no difference between a pure capitalist and a sociopathic asshole. And it's frustrating that they line their pockets while the likes of us suffer.

But I honestly grow tiresome of the suit-bashing. What's the point? Not that they don't deserve it, but newspapers aren't dead because of them. They're dead for the same reason countless other industries have died: The world changed. Newspapers are an outdated business model. The way in which people consume information has changed drastically, and the old model is dead, whether we like it or not. There's no kind-hearted stewards to save them, unless someone wants to subsidize the entire enterprise just because they love it. If you're in that camp, then you probably aren't enough of an asshole to acquire the money necessary to save newspapers, anyway.

Vulture capitalists have always chewed on newspaper companies. It's just that there used to be enough fat to go around. That's over now.