A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms
“What threatens local newspapers now is not just digital disruption or abstract market forces. They’re being targeted by investors who have figured out how to get rich by strip-mining local-news outfits. The model is simple: Gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring as much cash as possible out of the enterprise until eventually enough readers cancel their subscriptions that the paper folds, or is reduced to a desiccated husk of its former self.”
I live in a small town and I can't tell you how hard it is to figure out what is going on in my town. We have only a regional newspaper that is in a deal with Sinclair which skews the news heavily and it ignore the actual civic news that I would love to read. It's a shame and it's no wonder people rely on social media to try and see what's going on.