STRIPPED FOR PARTS: AMERICAN JOURNALISM ON THE BRINK

Film Information

In 2011, a Wall Street hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, started buying up chains of newspapers nationwide. Alden found a way to profit from distressed industries, but the effects on the newspapers’ journalism were disastrous. In 2015, reporter Julie Reynolds began investigating this hedge fund that had bought her own small-town daily along with more than 100 other newspapers nationwide. She exposed how these self-described “vulture capitalists” would strip the newspapers of their real estate, gut their newsrooms and run away with the profits. Reynolds’ reporting reached The Denver Post’s Chuck Plunkett, whose subsequent editorial criticizing Alden would trigger the “Denver Rebellion.”

Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink interweaves three tales: 1) A nuts-and-bolts portrayal of investigative reporting, as Reynolds peels back layers of Alden’s deception and heartless profiteering; 2) The damage that newspaper ownership by hedge funds—with no experience nor interest in journalism—inflicts on hundreds of communities nationwide; and 3) the David-and Goliath battle waged by a handful of journalists—in Colorado, California, Chicago and elsewhere—to prevent the destruction of their newspapers, to educate the public about what is at stake, and to create new vehicles to preserve, and improve, the vitality of local journalism.