In journalists’ circles, there’s perhaps no other organization that generates as much disgust as Alden Global Capital. In city after city where it has owned once-major daily newspapers since acquiring MediaNews Group out of bankruptcy some 16 years ago, newsrooms have been gutted. In Fort Lauderdale, a union effort blocked a planned effort to slice away at the staff of the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
Such tales continue in the beleaguered print industry. Now, there’s chatter that one of the nation’s largest radio station ownership groups could be faced with its own oversized job force shrinkage, given the post-bankruptcy ownership interest of Alden’s President.
According to a filing submitted to the FCC earlier this month, one of Cumulus Media‘s largest post-bankruptcy stakeholders will be Heath Freeman, the President of Alden Global Capital.
Multiple Transfer of Control Amendments filed with the Commission note that Freeman will hold a 31.86% voting interest in a reorganized debt-reduced Cumulus through an entity called “Next Gen Radio Enterprises LLC,” pending regulatory approval.
Alden was founded in 2007 under Randall D. Smith as an investor in distressed debt entities. By 2010, those businesses included MNG, giving it entry into a media world that includes such venerable titles as the Chicago Tribune, Denver Post, Boston Herald, New York Daily News, Orange County Register and dozens of other daily and weekly titles that once enjoyed robust circulation and advertising support but have seen diminished influence over the last two decades. Today, these titles are largely consolidated under Tribune Publishing, which Alden fully acquired in 2021.
ANTICIPATING A ‘VULTURE’
Alden’s deep newsroom cuts have been the subject of many news reports. NPR on the day it completed its Tribune Publishing acquisition described Alden as a “vulture” fund whose signature act was making deep newsroom cuts. NewsGuild reported that Alden offered buyouts across Tribune’s newsrooms within days of taking control, cutting news staff by roughly 20%.
In fact, NewsGuild-CWA President Jon Schleuss has said Alden cut nearly three-quarters of its newspapers’ combined workforce between 2012 and the end of 2020. Nieman Lab also chimed in, disclosing a consistent pattern: acquire a distressed paper, sell off real estate and other saleable assets, cut staff until margins recover, and reinvest precious little back into the newsroom.
That real estate strategy drew its own congressional scrutiny. In a 2019 letter, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote to Freeman directly, citing reports that Alden had built commercial real estate subsidiaries specifically to spin off newsroom office and printing facilities for sale or lease after acquisition.
A year later, Illinois Democratic Senators Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth wrote to Freeman, this time over Tribune Publishing specifically, after Alden built a 32% stake in the company — a size almost identical to the interest now disclosed in Cumulus’s filing — that was followed within months by buyouts and the departure of the Chicago Tribune‘s top two editors. “Alden Global Capital must reverse course and put an end to policies that have hollowed out local newspapers and their staff across the country,” the senators wrote.
Newsroom reaction has at times been public and pointed. In 2018, the Denver Post’s own editorial board ran a front-page rebuke of Freeman, warning that continued cuts represented “the beginning of the end” of the paper. When Alden began a fresh round of cuts at the New York Daily News in February, eliminating 28% of the union’s members, unit chair Michael Sheridan said the move showed the fund “has no interest in investing in local journalism, but instead want[s] only to squeeze the paper and its staff dry.”
Now, Cumulus staffers across its many markets could be in for some nail-biting. With the absence of Nielsen Audio ratings clouding the company’s ability to attract advertisers, leading to the recent introduction of Eastlan Ratings in key markets as a marketer substitute, and the lack of HD Radio limiting the aural power of such 100kw stations as WAIA-FM in Melbourne, Fla., for many years could be minimal headaches compared to what may come.
Cumulus’ pre-packaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing was made on March 5 in a Houston federal bankruptcy court; the court confirmed its reorganization plan on April 15. The plan doesn’t take effect until the FCC approves the ownership transfer, and this is a process Cumulus told a federal court in June it expects to close by late summer or early fall 2026.
Earlier this week, the broadcaster was granted a 120-day extension of its Chapter 11 exclusivity periods, pushing its exclusive plan-filing window to October 30 and its solicitation window to December 29.
— With reporting by Cameron Coats, in Troy, N.Y.
