Free Republic

The Denver Post is in open revolt against its owner. Angry and frustrated journalists at the 125-year-old newspaper took the extraordinary step this weekend of publicly blasting its New York-based hedge-fund owner and making the case for its own survival ... The bold tactic was born out of a dissatisfaction not uncommon in newsrooms across the country as newspapers grapple with the loss of revenue ... The lead editorial pulled no punches, describing executives at Alden Global Capital, the paper’s hedge-fund owner, as “vulture capitalists.” ... “The @denverpost is being murdered by its owners,” one Post reporter, John Wenzel, wrote...

In an interview last year, Mr. Freeman argued that the austere cuts enacted at his newspapers reflected a more realistic understanding of the industry’s direction and better positioned Alden-owned publishers for the pandemic’s downswing. “We were prepared for a real step down in terms of a recession because we were honest about what was needed in the future,” he said. “Numbers don’t lie.” The newspaper industry’s numbers looked bleak even before the pandemic. Annual advertising revenue dropped 70%, or $34 billion, between 2005 and 2018, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. More than 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004...