“The model is simple: Gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices, and wring out as much cash as possible,” McKay Coppins, a reporter with the Atlantic, wrote last month in an extensive profile of Alden.
“They call Alden a vulture hedge fund, and I think that’s honestly a misnomer,” a former reporter for the Chicago Tribune told Coppins. “A vulture doesn’t hold a wounded animal’s head underwater. This is predatory.”
Cuts to newsrooms mean fewer stories for readers and less time for reporters to dig into complex topics. It also means a loss of skill and expertise that take years, if not decades, to develop.
When we still worked at the Star’s old office building, I sat next to a reporter who often called family members of people who died in car wrecks or acts of violence. I heard the compassion and respect in her voice, combined with the professionalism of doing her job well and getting the information we needed for the story. That skill is a treasure for the Tucson community.
I’ll never forget watching a veteran Star reporter fine-tune a story we worked on together. The story was complicated, but he knew the ins-and-outs of the topic so well, and he could see the story so clearly, that his editing was smooth as silk. His fingers flew over the keyboard like he was playing a piano. He retired a few years ago and I sorely miss his voice in the Star.