Absolutely stumped on this one.
The above photo was taken in 2018 at a protest led by employees of The Denver Post after Alden started cutting the shit out of their staff. They pleaded for new ownership, called on Alden to change their out-for-profit strategies, and fought to keep their jobs by printing editorials in their own paper. But their pleas were only briefly heard and swiftly forgotten. And now the emboldened hedge fund wolves are set to sink their teeth into the Tribune Publishing Company, owner of the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the Baltimore Sun. And again, the employees at these papers are begging people to recognize what's going on and help them save their papers:
"The Tribune needs your help now more than ever as the journalists here face this paper's greatest threat in its nearly 175-year history -- potential new overlords whose track record suggests their primary interest is in draining as much profit as possible out of struggling newspapers as they suck the life, character and power out of them."
Newspapers worldwide have had a hard time adjusting to and coming up with better strategies to make it in a digital world. Facebook and Google made things worse when they took a monopoly-hold on digital advertising. But fixing the troubles facing the Fourth Estate will need people who actually give a damn about the news. Not guys like Alden, who are financially tied to fraud in Mexico, pollution in Russia, corruption in Brazil, and bleeding millions of dollars from one of their companies to take advantage of the Greek debt crisis. The news is there to expose companies like them, not make them richer while they destroy their entire industry. We need better working models, ethical leadership, and public investment in our papers. Instead, we have cartoon villains returning each and every episode to hunt down and strap their prey to train tracks loaded with TNT and watch as they explode into a million fireworks that rain down in money. And get away with it every time.