Another Bidder Steps Up for the Morning News. This Is Not Good.

In a way, I suppose it might be considered good news that not one but two companies see enough value in The Dallas Morning News to make offers to buy it. Yay! There's a glimmer of hope for daily, local journalism and ... wait, what? The second, higher bidder, as reported by the News itself today, is NewsMNG Enterprises Inc., part of Alden Global Capital.

Oh shit.

To those of you who don't follow the ins and outs of newspaper ownership — i.e., virtually all of you — how best do I  describe what it means for the reporters, editors and photographers to learn that Alden, a privately held hedge fund, is the current high bidder to acquire the News? Try this: Imagine you're taking a shower. You wash the soap out of your eyes to see Tony Perkins standing at the curtain, wearing a wig and dress.

Yeah, like that. There's a reason why so many news stories about Alden's media enterprises include the word "vulture."

Just two weeks ago, things were looking somewhat, maybe, more positive for the News as word broke that Hearst, the media company with a giant footprint in Texas as owner of the Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News and Beaumont Enterprise, among others, was offering $14 per share for DallasNews Corp. (Full disclosure: I worked for the San Antonio paper many, many years ago, and my wife is a former copy editor for the Morning News.)

The Morning News wrote that Hearst's offer "was 319% more than the July 9 closing price of $4.39. That puts the value of the company, Texas’ oldest continually operating company, at $74.9 million.”

Then word broke Thursday that Alden, owner of The Chicago Tribune, Boston Herald and San Jose Mercury News, among many others, was offering $16.50 per share, or "roughly $88 million," according to The New York Times.

We spoke with Joshua Benton, founder and former director of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard and a former News reporter, about the competition and who we should root for. It wasn't even close.

Global Capital's "entire business model is wrecking newspapers and just sucking the blood out of them till they die," he said.

Whoa, don't hold back, Josh. 

"I mean if you look at what they did to the Denver Post and what they did to the San Jose Mercury News, those are probably the closest analogs. Those are the papers that Alden has run the longest that are metro newspapers that aren't, you know, small town or county seat newspapers, and they just wrecked them, you know, completely ... beyond far decimated the newsrooms, and that's what they do."

In other words, with Alden at the helm, there likely would be even more layoffs, right down to the bone and into the marrow.

Benton noted that Hearst is family-owned and a diversified media company with a large footprint in Texas and a history of practicing journalism, not cannibalism (our word, not his). It also derives most of its profits from other parts of its portfolio, so it might be less hungry to slash its newspaper operations.

The News' story about Alden's offer said that the board of DallasNews Corp. was weighing Alden's offer but still endorsed the agreement with Hearst, which was supposed to close sometime this fall. Robert Decherd, DallasNews' controlling shareholder and great-grandson of the newspaper's co-founder, also supported the Hearst deal. “Hearst is a nearly unique legacy newspaper company in an era where many, if not most, of the principles that have created great journalism in local newspapers are being ignored in the financial consolidation of the industry,” Decherd said, according to the News' report. “The negative effect on American communities is very real."

For all the many shots the Observer has taken at the News over the years, I must say that the News does a pretty bang-up job covering local news, considering all the constraints facing news media. While continued local, family ownership would be ideal for the community, that might not be profitable, so let's root for the next, less-worse thing — Hearst.

Of course, that's not to say Hearst doesn't have its detractors, as well. I spoke with Jon Schoeuss, president of the NewsGuild-CWA, the union affiliated with the guild at the Morning News.

"We're going to fight for the journalists and the media workers at the Dallas Morning News no matter the owners," he said. "... Both show a complete disregard for journalists and do not represent the readers."

Hearst does have a history of trying to stick knives in unions. For example, when I was in San Antonio, Hearst owned the San Antonio Light, a guild paper, and competed with the Express-News, owned by Rupert Murdoch and therefore definitely not a guild paper. When Hearst bought the Express-News, it shuttered its own paper, kept us and sent its guild members packing.

So while it might not be "actively murdering" a newspaper like Alden (Schoeuss' words), the immediate future for the News' unionized staff is fraught unless, say, some community-minded, less profit-hungry group of Texas rich people step forward ready to invest in supporting a valuable local community watchdog.

Yeah ... laughing through the tears there.