Well this is interesting… I was alerted to this by a friend who still works in print news. In this age when print media still provides many of our most carefully researched blockbuster stories even as it struggles to break even financially, hedge fund Alden Global Capital is throwing it an anvil.
According to a new lawsuit (PDF) by minority shareholder Solus Alternative Asset Management reported by news guild member organization News Matters, Alden has been draining hundreds of millions of dollars to prop up its own failing investments:
Alden used the newspapers’ cash for speculative ventures, the lawsuit alleges, and invested millions in a failing pharmacy chain, risky Greek sovereign debt and other questionable investments “entirely unrelated to the company’s core businesses.”
Worse, as majority owners, they have stopped providing other shareholders information on board activities..
[Solus alleges that] MNG Enterprises, which does business as Digital First Media, began hiding its financial information from shareholders in 2017.
Digital First Media has closed several of our nation’s papers in its quest for external funding, and other still-profitable papers have seen deep staff cuts.
The rest of the article details seeming payback schemes and other fraudulent activity — it’s worth the read.
(Note: News Matters is a news worker’s guild organization for workers at Digital First Media.)