Free Press

January 14, 2019

From Digital Free Press:

Digital First Media — which is notorious for gutting local newsrooms to turn a profit for its hedge-fund owners — is trying to buy Gannett, the country’s largest newspaper publisher.¹

The owners of Digital First have been called “vulture capitalists” by journalists in their own newsrooms.² The company has censored journalists’ work and fired reporters³ who criticize their ruthless tactics — which are designed to pad the bottom line.

Tell Gannett’s board: Support your newsrooms and the communities they serve. Don’t sell to Digital First Media.

In recent years, more and more private-equity companies have been buying up newspapers, slashing jobs, turning newsrooms into shells of their former selves and spending profits on anything BUT journalism.⁴

This isn’t just bad for newsrooms: It also spells doom for millions of people around the country who rely on their local newspapers to find out what’s happening. When local news disappears, fewer people participate in their communities.⁵

And while Gannett itself has a questionable track record when it comes to investing in news, if the company sells to Digital First it will decimate news coverage in thousands of communities across the United States.

As one journalist noted, if Digital First Media is “knocking on the door, you should lock the deadbolt.”⁶

Shareholders will pressure Gannett’s board to let the vultures in the door. We can’t let that happen. Take action today to support communities around the country by protecting local news.

For the future of local news,

Mike, Heather, Candace and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net

P.S. Digital First Media’s bid for Gannett will decimate local coverage of communities around the country. Tell Gannett’s board to reject this bid.

Contempt for the crowd.

B R E X I T explained in a new HBO film debuting Sat., January 19th, focusing on mega data, mined personal data funded by Robert Mercer and social media. [Mercer played a key role in the Brexit campaign by donating data analytics services to Nigel Farage.]

Thomas Merton:

“Descending into the crowd, the individual loses his personality and his character and perhaps even his moral dignity as a human being. Contempt for the ‘crowd’ is by no means contempt for mankind. The crowd is below man. The crowd devours the human that is in us to make us the members of a many-headed beast […] the press and the radio too oftener simply the voice of the vast aggregation that is something less than human.”