NY Daily News' Owners Now Include 'Destroyer Of Newspapers'

NEW YORK CITY — The Daily News' owners sold $118 million in shares to a New York City hedge fund that critics have described as a "destroyer of newspapers," Tribune Publishing Company announced Tuesday.

Majority owner Michael Ferro sold 25 percent of shares in Tribune Publishing — a media conglomerate that includes the Daily News, Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun, among others — to Alden Global Capital, LLC – making it the company's largest shareholder.

The Tribune Publishing Board of Directors looks forward to working with Alden to enhance our company's value as the company continues to provide valuable journalism," said the board's chairman David Dreier in a statement.

"Our board believes that solid journalism enhances shareholder value and that will continue to be our driving principle."

The deal transfers majority ownership from Ferro, who took over Tribune Publishing in 2016 and served as chairman until May 2018, to Alden owner Heath Freeman.

Freeman was called a newspaper destroyer in a 2018 Bloomberg opinion piece which described his layoff policies as "savage" after the hedge fund manager bought the Boston Herald and the Denver Post.

The Daily News faced brutal layoffs of its own in 2018 when it lost half its editorial staff.