HARTFORD, Conn. — Community members and journalists, along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Mayor Luke Bronin, gathered Saturday afternoon in Hartford for a rally opposing the sale of the Courant and Tribune Publishing to Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund with a reputation for cutting costs.
The “Save Local News” rally came less than a week before shareholders vote on May 21 on a deal to sell Tribune Publishing to Alden for $633 million. A rival group, led by Maryland hotel magnate Stewart Bainum, is attempting to assemble a competing bid for the papers that make up Tribune publishing. Bainum would sell at least some of Tribune’s papers, including the Courant, to local owners.
“No matter how many times I want to call up and disagree with a story, I’m grateful there’s a paper like this in this community,” Bronin said. “I fear what happens if the ownership changes to a hedge fund whose business model is based not on truth but extraction.”
Alden, currently the largest shareholder with a nearly 32% stake in Tribune, has purchased at least 200 newspapers and aggressively cut costs, eliminating jobs. According to the Washington Post, the hedge fund mismanaged employees pension funds, prompting a Labor Department investigation.
A spokesperson for Alden could not be reached Saturday. Tribune Publishing and the Courant declined to comment.
Blumenthal spoke of looking at the Courant with trepidation in the morning occasionally but he said that the paper, which was founded in 1764 and is the oldest continuously published newspaper in the U.S., is vital to the communities it serves.
“I say to the shareholders of Tribune: Get a better buyer. One who respects community, not just dollar signs. One who regards the Courant as the priceless asset it is, not just real estate that they can put on the auction block,’' Blumenthal said.
A letter sent Friday by the state treasurers of Maryland, Illinois and Connecticut to the Tribune board of directors warned that much is at stake with the sale of the newspapers.
“We know all too well that reduced local news coverage leads to lower voter turnout, increased political partisanship, and less sunlight on the financial decisions made by elected leaders,’' said the letter, which was signed by state Treasurer Shawn T. Wooden and his colleagues in Maryland and Illinois.
Layoffs and buyouts have reduced the Courant’s staff over the years and the paper’s newsroom was closed in December, forcing reporters, photographers and editors to continue to work from home as they have done since the start of the pandemic last March. Printing the paper has also been outsourced.
Saturday’s rally, organized by the Hartford Courant Guild, was held in a parking lot next to the former Courant offices and newsroom on Broad Street. Other rallies were held at Tribune papers around the country, including the Chicago Tribune, the Orlando Sentinel and the Virginian-Pilot. Tribune Publishing also includes the Baltimore Sun and the New York Daily News.
“You’ve already been cut to the bone,” AFL-CIO president Sal Luciano told a crowd of more than 100. “Twenty years ago, the Courant had a news staff of nearly 400 people.
“All a hedge fund will do is wring the last few dollars out. ... We can’t let that happen.”
Courant reporter Christine Dempsey held up a copy of the newsroom directory from 1993, which had multiple pages, and compared it to the much smaller newsroom now.
“The general public is not aware of how few people are actually putting the paper out,” Courant reporter Christopher Keating said. “The people who are still here after all these years are really doing yeoman’s work on every topic — sports, photographers, news, politics, everything we write about, everybody is going the extra mile. If you’re still here at the Hartford Courant in 2021, you’re playing for pride.”
