Alden Global Capital, based in New York City, has slashed the Denver Post newsroom staff from a high of around 300 down to about 60. Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi tells Colorado Matters about his reporting on the secretive company, whose newspaper holdings stretch far beyond just Colorado. Alden is so publicity shy, Farhi says, “that its entire website consists of nothing more than its name over a glossy nature photograph.”
Headquartered in New York with investment funds domiciled in the tax-lenient Cayman Islands and a clientele that is mostly foreign, Alden has been investing in American newspapers since 2009. Through its majority control of a management company called Digital First Media, Alden owns nearly 100 daily and weekly papers, including such big-city dailies as the Mercury News, the Denver Post and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The company’s holdings are notably concentrated in California, where it effectively owns every major newspaper around Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area with the exception of the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle.
