Alden Global Capital decimated newsrooms. Now it might throw them a lifeline

The hedge fund’s lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft highlights the contradiction at the heart of journalism in 2024.

Alden Global Capital has for years been lambasted as the journalism industry’s “grim reaper.” The hedge fund, which owns some 200 publications including such stalwarts as the Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel, follows a pretty simple formula: Buy the depressed asset, strip it of its parts, and extract value—all at the expense of the newspapers, and by extension, the communities they serve. In this era of widespread instability in the media sector, Alden-owned newspapers stand out for cutting their staff at twice the rate of their competitors, according to a 2018 study by University of North Carolina researchers. Which is why there’s a grim irony to the fact that Alden could now be the industry’s best hope for staying solvent in the AI era.