MediaNews CEO steps down; banksters take seats on board

[Newsjock]

http://newsonomics.com/dean-singletons-departure-marks-new-owners-want-for-faster-innovation

... Look at whom is replacing the three departing Singleton-ites on the MediaNews board, from the release: Heath Freeman, Managing Director at Alden Global Capital; Bruce Schnelwar, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Smith Management LLC and Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of Alden Global Capital; and Eric Krauss, who was most recently Chief Financial Officer of Action Sports, Inc.

If the name Alden Global Capital is starting to sound vaguely familiar, it’s because the company has been mentioned in stories about shake-ups at Freedom Communications and the new Philadelphia Media Network, both of which it owns stakes in.

This phenomenon of private equity and bank owners asserting their controlling stakes in news companies has been little discussed publicly. In part, that’s because the new owners have been largely silent; one journalist expressed dismay today when he went to the Alden site, and found a single page. To get into the site, you need a client log-on.

We can look at this new ownership phenomenon two ways. The easy one is to decry largely silent control of the press by bankers, whose main motive is to create something of value of their woebegone holdings, and then sell out in the next several years. Bankers, after all, don’t come with the public service gene that have defined even the most profit-seeking traditional publishers. We are naturally suspicious of what they may do with the newspapers.

[DavidDvorkin]

1. "whom is replacing"?

Ouch.