Alden Global Is Building a Tower of Companies It Can Cut Down

When last we left Alden Global Capital LLC and its 39-year-old managing partner, Heath Freeman, they had just purchased the Boston Herald, the struggling tabloid that competes with the Boston Globe. The $12 million purchase took place in March; within a week, to the surprise of absolutely no one, Alden Global announced that it would lay off a quarter of the staff.

This, of course, is Alden Global’s MO. It buys up newspapers — more than 90 so far — but unlike Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post, the firm isn’t doing it to revive them. Instead, it cuts and cuts, and then cuts some more, until there’s little left but a carcass. Speaking truth to power, the importance of the Fourth Estate to a functioning democracy, the idea of bearing witness — none of that matters to Freeman and his fellow hedgies at Alden Global. Their only goal is to suck out cash and redirect it elsewhere. At the Herald alone, those first layoffs were followed by more, until its staff has shrunk from 240 employees to about 100. No one thinks it’s done shrinking.