Majority owner of Sentinel & Enterprise parent company to acquire Tribune Publishing
Photo | Courtesy of Google
The Sentinel & Enterprise's former offices on Main Street in downtown Fitchburg.
Alden Global Capital LLC, a New York hedge fund which backs the parent company of Fitchburg’s Sentinel & Enterprise newspaper, has agreed to acquire Tribune Publishing Co. for about $430 million.
Tribune Publishing is the parent company of a variety of papers, including the Chicago Tribune, the Hartford Courant in Connecticut, New York Daily News and the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland.
Alden’s subsidiary, Colorado-based MediaNews Group, which also does business as Digital First Media, also owns many papers around the country, including local publications like the Sentinel & Enterprise, The Lowell Sun and the Boston Herald. Alden is known for making dramatic cuts to the papers it owns.
The Sentinel & Enterprise’s offices, for example, closed in February 2018, with reporters working remotely while managed by editors based in Lowell.
Under the merger agreement, Alden will acquire all outstanding shares of Tribune common stock that it doesn’t currently own for $17.25 per share in cash, according to Tribune Publishing news release announcing the development. Alden already owns 31.6% of Tribune common stock, which according to a Tuesday report from the Chicago Tribune, makes Alden the company’s largest shareholder.
The transaction, according to the Chicago Tribune report, would take Tribune Publishing private.
As part of the announced merger, Alden has signed a non-binding term sheet to sell The Baltimore Sun to Sunlight for All Institute, a public charity, according to a press release.
Editor’s note: Staff Writer Monica Busch, who wrote this article, previously worked for the Sentinel & Enterprise.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments