Part 1: Five colleagues are shot dead. Everyone is traumatized. On that day, June 28, 2018, what can the remaining staff of the Capital Gazette do that might make a difference? Publish "a damn paper."
Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the
Hartford Courant, as well as other local newspapers in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and Florida. Tribune already counted Alden as its largest shareholder; Alden was offering $14.25 per share to take full control of the company. Yesterday, following weeks of wrangling, Tribune announced its intention to sell to Alden at $17.25 per share. The deal as a whole is valued at $630 million, and would take Tribune private.
Alden has become notorious and widely reviled for its tactic of ruthlessly slashing costs at its existing media properties; in 2018, staffers at the
Denver Post, where management had just moved to cut thirty jobs, assailed their owners as “vultures” in an editorial that resonated across the media industry. “Media observers note that they make cuts almost from day one. Pens and notebooks disappear from newsrooms. One newsroom was missing hot water. Then newspaper buildings are sold, and staff is consolidated
White Lies and the upcoming
On Our Watch, our partnership with Member station KQED.Aligning these teams allows us to be more efficient with how we allocate resources across the unit and to thoughtfully extend the reach of our work by, among other things, publishing it in more than one feed. It will help us better coordinate across platforms and the network, particularly when it comes to enterprise longform projects and investigations. And it offers the opportunity for reporters, editors and producers to work on projects and launches across properties.
Many of you have heard about these efforts and know that