Hedged: How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy

This damning debut from American University communications professor Susca examines how “overharvesting profits, the debt born of mergers and acquisitions, and the greed of private investment funds” has hollowed out newspapers across the country over the past 20 years. She explains that private equity firms and hedge funds’ practice of purchasing companies by taking on exorbitant debt has disastrous consequences for employees; for instance, private equity billionaire Sam Zell’s 2007 purchase the Tribune Company, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, saddled the business with $13 billion in debt that it dealt with by laying off 5% of its publishing employees. Affecting stories detail how such deals harm journalists; for instance, Susca tells how Kristen Doerschner, former managing editor of Pennsylvania’s Beaver County Times, was so stressed “her hair began falling out” after Fortress Investment Group’s 2017 purchase of the paper forced her to reduce staff and coverage. Susca also makes a persuasive case that communities are worse off after the corporatization of local news, arguing that the 2020 case of Daniel Prude’s death at the hands of Rochester, N.Y., police “is one that a well-staffed newspaper... should have caught” before the Prude family’s legal campaign for accountability garnered national attention (Rochester’s Democrat and Chronicle had been severely winnowed by news conglomerate Gannett). Readers will be outraged. (Jan.)