LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)–AHF and its housing advocacy division, Housing Is A Human Right (HHR), will run the latest in a series of housing advocacy ads, this time targeting both the City of Los Angeles and the entrenched bureaucracy at the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (DWP) in a full-page, full-color ad set to run this Sunday, October 30th in the Los Angeles Times. The ad headlined “LA’s Housing Standstill,” condemns all the players holding up creation of affordable housing, stating that “It is virtually impossible to get anything built in Los Angeles in less than five years.”
After launching its Healthy Housing Foundation (HHF) in 2017 to help alleviate the twin homelessness and housing affordability crises in Los Angeles, AHF quickly learned that working within the city’s existing framework and bureaucracies—like the DWP—to produce low-income housing in Los Angeles is disastrous for people seeking to create affordable housing—even more so for those individuals who need it.
AHF’s ad continues:
“The city claims homelessness is an emergency, but it sure doesn’t act like it.
Whether it’s DWP bringing in power or getting plans approved-nobody’s in a hurry.
But if we are to tackle homelessness, we need urgency.”
AHF summed up its cri de couer for far greater urgency by all city departments, including DWP, noting:
“1,500 people die on the streets every year.”
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 1.6 million clients in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare
From film to TV, Queen Elizabeth II has been the subject of an array of Hollywood projects and actor’s lives.
As the world mourns Queen Elizabeth II, few outside her family will have such an intimate reflection on her life as the women who have put themselves in her shoes.
These are women who swam in the queen’s psyche for their portrayals in award-winning films and television series.
Olivia Colman, who played the queen in the latest installments of Netflix’s “The Crown,” has said Queen Elizabeth had a lasting impact on her world view.
“She’s extraordinary,” Colman said of the queen to The New York Times. “She’s changed my views on everything.”
From her early days as a post-war monarch, the queen has been portrayed as a stoic, devoted constitutionalist, abstaining from public debate and devoted to the stability of her country’s government.
Related StoryQueen Elizabeth II’s Lasting Legacy On Britain And The World
Her consistency in the face of crisis, from the beginning of her reign to the end, was a source of inspiration for Claire Foy, who told the Los Angeles Times in 2016 she was struck by the queen’s grit after the death of her father — the very death that propelled her to the throne in 1952. It’s a complicated grief all too relevant to the new king.
“The one person who could tell you how to do the job is dead,” Foy told the paper. “…And everyone is looking to you to know what to do, and you’re terrified. But she just keeps calm and carries on, and that’s it, really. That’s the story of her life.”
It was that same consistency that captivated Helen Mirren as she prepared for her role in “The Queen.” The Oscar winner’s portrayal of Elizabeth won praise for both the actor and the woman she portrayed. Mirren later described herself as not a royalist, but a “queenist.”
On social media Thursday, the actress said, “We mourn a woman, who, with or without the crown, was the epitome of nobility.”
It was one of tons of loving tributes to the woman who helmed a complicated, controversial institution that enraptured Hollywood for 70 years.
The Los Angeles Times obtained documents showing multiple celebrities are the biggest offenders when it comes to breaking water budgets.
The super-rich are way overspending their water allocations amid dire warnings about water use and restrictions on watering outside, and some of the biggest names in Hollywood are some of the worst offenders, according to the Los Angeles Times.
As water reserves dry up across the West, southern Californians are allowed to water outside only twice a week. Also, massive properties in the wealthy enclaves of Hidden Hills and Calabasas — near Los Angeles — have water allowances.
But documents the LA Times obtained show names like Dwayne Wade, Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Hart and Kim Kardashian smashing those limits, ending up with warnings from the utility.
Now the Las Virgenes Water District could put “flow meters” on their water lines to track their use and effectively shut off outdoor watering when they reach their limit.
It comes as states across the West try to curb water use, while Arizona takes the biggest hit with a federal government-imposed 21% cut to its water allowance. It’s a concern for the state’s leaders, who are worried about its agricultural output.
“If Yuma County doesn’t have the water it needs to grow produce, then that means that those products are gonna be more expensive across the country,” said Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
In California, basketball star Dwyane Wade and his wife Gabrielle Union told the Times they have been working to fix leaks in their pool and transition to drought resistant landscaping. They went over their limit by 90,000 gallons, which is more than 1,400% of their allowance.
Sylvester Stallone and his wife Jennifer Flavin went 230,000 gallons over their limit, using more than 533% of the allowance. Stallone’s lawyer told the LA Times the actor needs to water more than 500 trees on his property, and he has allowed some grass to die.
Newsy reached out to representatives for Hart and Kardashian but didn’t get a response.
“Across the west, across the nation, we need to have a conversation about how we’re pricing water and how we’re using water, especially for aesthetic purposes,” said Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network.
The water district acknowledges many landscapes in the ritzy neighborhood aren’t built for drought and can’t survive under the restrictions in place.
A spokesperson said it takes time to adapt entire properties to drought-resistence, but it still has to be done.
In Colorado, cities are turning grasses over to more drought-tolerant varieties.
“The reason it doesn’t need any irrigation is because once the roots are established they grow deep enough that they pull water up from underneath,” said Luc Hatlestad, public information officer of Arapahoe County, Colorado.
“There’s a lot of need right now to save water for the Colorado River,” said Austin Krcmarik, water efficiency lead of Denver Water. “We really need to figure out new strategies outside of what we’ve traditionally done on how we can play our part of making the landscapes work for us and save water.”
It’s an example to Las Vegas, where golf courses and casinos are apparently struggling to keep their water use down as resorts fill up again after the 2020 shutdown.
“They have removed approximately 900 acres of grass from their courses that has helped them to better manage their water resources,” said Bronson Mack, public information officer of the Las Vegas Valley water district.
The dwindling water supply out west is pressuring the rich to turn down the flow and deal with the consequences.
“We have got to be in a position to use a significant amount of water less than we’ve used in the past,” said Gene Shawcroft, Colorado River commissioner of Utah. “We simply cannot continue where we are.”
Related StoryInterior Department Restricts Water Supply To Multiple Western States
Vanessa Bryant testified for three hours over photos of her husband and daughter’s bodies shot and shared by deputies and firefighters.
Vanessa Bryant testified Friday that she was only beginning to grieve the loss of her husband, basketball star Kobe Bryant, and their 13-year-old daughter Gianna when she was faced with the fresh horror of learning that sheriff’s deputies and firefighters had shot and shared photos of their bodies at the site of the helicopter crash that killed them.
“I felt like I wanted to run, run down the block and scream,” she said, her tears turning to sobs and her voice quickening. “It was like the feeling of wanting to run down a pier and jump into the water. The problem is I can’t escape. I can’t escape my body.”
During her three hours on the witness stand in a Los Angeles federal court, where she is suing LA County for invasion of privacy over the pictures, Bryant said she had fought to get through both public and private memorials for her loved ones and seven others who were killed Jan. 26, 2020, and thought she was ready to really begin the grieving process about a month later. She was with friends and her surviving daughters, and holding her 7-month-old baby, when she received a call about a Los Angeles Times story on the crash-site photos.
“I bolted out of the house and around to the side so my girls wouldn’t see,” she said. “I was blindsided again, devastated, hurt. I trusted them. I trusted them not to do these things.”
Evidence presented at trial showed that a sheriff’s deputy showed a photo of Bryant’s body to a bartender as he drank, spurring an official complaint from another man drinking nearby, and that firefighters shared them with each other at an awards banquet. Others shared them with spouses. An attorney for the county said the photos had been taken only because they were essential for assessing the site moments after the crash, and that when LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva learned they were being shared, he demanded they all be deleted.
No photos emerged publicly, but Vanessa Bryant said she has constant worry that some still might.
“I live in fear every day of being on social media and these popping up,” she testified. “I live in fear of my daughters being on social media and these popping up.”
She said the thought keeps her awake at night as she lies next to her 3-year-old and her 5-year-old, and sometimes leads to panic attacks in which she can’t breathe.
Under cross-examination from J. Mira Hashmall, the lawyer representing LA County at the trial, Bryant testified that she had not received any medical diagnosis of having had panic attacks, or any mental health disorder, nor had she taken any medications for them.
She said she had talked to a therapist for about 18 months after the crash, but had not since.
“I feel like sometimes it helps,” Bryant said, “but sometimes it’s completely draining.”
Hashmall spent much of her 90-minute cross-examination going through the business roles Bryant now plays, including acting as president of her husband’s multimedia company, Granity Studios, overseeing the publication of one book he wrote and helping to finish and publish another, heading the foundation started for Kobe and Gianna, and establishing several other companies.
Hashmall suggested that Bryant’s ability to do all of this meant she was functioning well and was not overcome with fear and anxiety.
“It sounds like on top of everything else you’re juggling a business empire,” Hashmall said at one point.
“For me, it’s a labor of love,” said Bryant, who remained calm and composed during cross-examination.
She cried frequently, and laughed occasionally, during the questioning of her attorney Luis Li, who had her describe her life with her “proud girl-dad” husband and their daughters.
“He was just such a beautiful and devoted father,” she said.
Bryant chronicled the day of the crash, her anguish, and her frustration at trying to learn whether her husband and daughter were still alive after she initially heard from an assistant that there were five survivors.
She described Sheriff Villanueva coming into a room where she waited at Lost Hills sheriff’s station and confirming that her husband and daughter had been killed. He asked if there was anything he could do for her.
“I told him, if you can’t bring my babies back, then please secure the area,” Bryant said. “I’m concerned about paparazzi.”
“Did the sheriff tell you one of his deputies had already gone to the hill to take close-up pictures of crash victims?” Li asked.
“No,” Bryant responded.
During cross-examination, Hashmall said the deputy, Doug Johnson, who hiked through tough terrain into the hills in northern Los Angeles County to the crash site and shot the photos that were later shared, was only trying to use them to assess the situation.
“You can understand why he would want the same information you did,” Hashmall said.
“I don’t think you need to take close-up photos of people to determine how many people are on an aircraft,” Bryant replied. “I think he could have just counted.”
Bryant’s side rested its case after her testimony, which came on the eighth day of the trial.
On Wednesday, jurors were selected and opening statements were shared in the trial against Los Angeles County.
Jurors sat Wednesday for the opening day of Vanessa Bryant’s high profile case. She’s suing Los Angeles County over photos of her deceased husband, Kobe Bryant.
A deputy trainee on site the day of the helicopter crash that killed him, their daughter and seven others took photos of the remains and shared them with other deputies and in at least one instance with a bartender.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva told The Today Show in March of 2020 that what the deputies did was unacceptable.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom later signed a law making it a crime for first responders to take photos of a dead person at a crime scene for any non-law enforcement reason.
In her deposition tied to her lawsuit, Vanessa Bryant said she had a conversation with Sheriff Villanueva the day of the accident, telling him, “If you can’t bring my husband and baby back, please make sure no one takes photographs of them. Please secure the area.”
She says he told her, “I will.”
The sheriff told The Today Show shortly after the photos were shared that new internal policies would prevent a repeat.
“We’re redoing the entire policies, and we’re creating new ones that are very specific, including a penalty of discharge for a violation of these policies,” Villanueva said.
But the Los Angeles Times reports when he found out about the photos, the sheriff told deputies they wouldn’t be disciplined if they came clean and deleted them.
Since then, the publication says most of the deputies have replaced their phones or wiped data from them. Not keeping that digital evidence could weigh heavily into the trial.
The trial comes more than two years after the basketball superstar’s death. It’s also a litmus test for privacy rights of celebrities, protecting their dignity in their most vulnerable moments and respecting the dignity of their families.
A deputy used his knee against the head of an inmate to restrain him, and internal documents show the sheriff’s department tried to cover it up.
Los Angeles prosecutors are assembling a grand jury to investigate the sheriff’s department’s handling of an incident in which a deputy knelt on an inmate’s head and kept his knee there for three minutes.
“We don’t have time for this internal, let-me-see-if-we-can-blow-up-the-sheriff-somehow nonsense,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said.
Villanueva insists he didn’t know about the incident until months after it occurred, at which time he ordered a criminal investigation and relieved the deputy of duty.
But internal sources at the sheriff’s department told the Los Angeles Times the sheriff knew just days after the incident occurred.
Internal documents show the department tried to sweep the incident under the rug to avoid bad press and public parallels to the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Surveillance video the Los Angeles Times obtained shows what happened.
Deputies walked two inmates through a hall during routine checks as the inmates await court appearances. One of the inmates punched a deputy, and several deputies swarm into a physical struggle with the man to restrain him.
After the inmate is on the ground, a deputy placed his knee on his head.
He kept it there for minutes, even after the inmate stopped resisting, according to sheriffs department officials who viewed the video.
The incident and alleged coverup comes amid shrinking law enforcement ranks in Los Angeles.
“A number of our specialized units have been either disbanded or significantly downsized as a result of the reduction in our workforce,” Los Angeles Police Department Chief Michel R. Moore said.
In Los Angeles County, it’s another scandal for a sheriff accused of corruption, overseeing a department where deputies are accused of being gang members.
The assembly of a grand jury is no surprise for the sheriff.
“We’re more than excited to actually have to testify under oath in any court of competent jurisdiction on this matter, in front of a grand jury, in federal court,” Villanueva said. “In fact, we’re more than excited to.”
But it is a sign of the county’s appetite for holding its sheriffs’ feet to the fire on use of force.
The logo of networking gear maker Cisco Systems Inc is seen during GSMA’s 2022 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain February 28, 2022. REUTERS/Nacho Doce
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OAKLAND, Calif., Aug 5 (Reuters) – Cisco Systems Inc (CSCO.O) on Friday lost a court appeal to move to private arbitration a case over alleged caste discrimination in its Silicon Valley offices, where managers of Indian descent are accused of bias against a fellow employee from India.
The networking gear and business software company has denied the allegations. It had argued to a California appeals court that the state’s Civil Rights Department, which had brought the case on behalf of a worker identified under the pseudonym John Doe, should be subjected to an employment arbitration agreement signed by Doe.
“As an independent party, the Department cannot be compelled to arbitrate under an agreement it has not entered,” the appellate panel wrote.
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In a separate order Friday, it told a lower-court judge to reconsider a ruling that would have required the state to identify Doe. The lower court had said the law prevented it from considering whether Doe’s family members in India could be harmed by naming him.
The higher court wrote that “harm to family members anywhere is a legitimate consideration in determining whether a party should be granted anonymity.”
Cisco and the state agency did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The ancient socioreligious concept of caste has led to centuries of oppression against some families born into the lowest groupings in India. California has alleged that those biases had traveled to the U.S. tech industry, where Indians are the largest pool of immigrant workers.
The state sued Cisco in 2020 after Doe complained to it about company human resources staff not finding merit in his concerns that two higher-caste managers had allegedly denied him work and disparaged him.
The lawsuit has ignited advocacy at U.S. companies, universities and other institutions calling for more guidelines and training related to the potential for caste prejudice.
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Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by David Gregorio & Shri Navaratnam
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Paresh Dave
Thomson Reuters
San Francisco Bay Area-based tech reporter covering Google and the rest of Alphabet Inc. Joined Reuters in 2017 after four years at the Los Angeles Times focused on the local tech industry.
About 500 people were in San Pedro’s Peck Park when the shooting began, many of whom ran for cover.
A dispute at a Los Angeles park at or near an apparently unpermitted car show led to a barrage of gunshots that left two people dead and five wounded, authorities said.
The LA Police Department said the shooting occurred around 3:50 p.m. Sunday at Peck Park in LA’s San Pedro neighborhood. At the time, an estimated 500 people were in the park and many ran for cover when the shooting began.
“All of a sudden we heard three shots — pow, pow, pow,” witness Dwayne Ellis told KABC. “Then we heard about 50 or 100 more — pow, pow, boom, boom. All kinds of shots. People were running.”
LAPD Capt. Kelly Muniz said during a news conference that a dispute of some kind preceded the gunfire. Police don’t know what started the disagreement or how many people fired. No arrests had been made.
Paramedics from the LA Fire Department responded. Spokesman Erik Scott said four men and three women were taken to hospitals and two of them died. He said the seven victims ranged in age from 23 to 54. No names were released.
Peck Park is about 20 miles south of downtown Los Angeles. Councilman Joe Buscaino represents the area and said the shooting occurred during an unpermitted car show hosted by gang members.
“Know that this park and many parks across the city have been having issues with these car shows,” Buscaino told Southern California News Group.
Buscaino has since 2020 been pushing a measure to allow Los Angeles park rangers to carry firearms.
“Recreation staff on scene can identify potential issues and coordinate with park rangers,” Buscaino said. “We’ve lost a sense of common sense in the City of Los Angeles.”
Skipp Townsend, a gang interventionist who visits the park regularly, was at the scene with other onlookers Sunday.
“It’s sad and heartbreaking that people still won’t talk,” Townsend told the Los Angeles Times. “You know, instead they pick up guns. So that’s heartbreaking, that we can have peaceful events in this area for, you know, two, three years straight with no incidents, and then one incident like this happens.”
manufacturing activity in the United States and Europe showed a rapid pickup, as did retail sales data from Britain.
The Stoxx Europe 600 rose 0.6 percent led by gains in consumer companies. One of the biggest gainers was Richemont, the Swiss luxury goods company that owns brands including Cartier and Montblanc. Richemont shares rose after the company reported its full-year results with strong growth in sales in Asia especially for its jewelry and watch brands.
Oil prices rose. Futures of West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. crude benchmark, rose 1.4 percent to $63.48 a barrel.
Economic data
Retail sales in Britain surged in April as nonessential stores were allowed to reopen. The volume of sales increased 9.2 percent from the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said on Friday. It was more than double the forecast by economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Shopping for clothes stores led the resurgence.
Across the eurozone, activity in the services sector jumped in May. The Purchasing Managers’ Index climbed to 55.1 points from 50.5 in April, IHS Markit said on Friday. A reading above 50 signals expansion. The index for manufacturing was little changed from the previous month at 62.8.
“Growth would have been even stronger had it not been for record supply chain delays and difficulties restarting businesses quickly enough to meet demand, especially in terms of rehiring,” Chris Williamson, chief business economist at IHS Markit, wrote in the report.
IHS’s measure for U.S. manufacturers and service providers climbed to a record. The Purchasing Managers Index for the country rose to 68.1, from 63.5 a month earlier. “Business confidence across the private sector improved in May,” IHS reported.
There are many ways to measure how much the economy has reopened after pandemic lockdowns. One offbeat way is to compare the share prices of Clorox to Dave & Buster’s.
Nick Mazing, the director of research at the data provider Sentieo, came up with this metric to gauge shifts in postpandemic activity. The higher Clorox’s share price rises relative to Dave & Buster’s, the more people appear to be staying home and disinfecting everything than going out to crowded bars.
By this measure, the DealBook newsletter reports, conditions have nearly returned to prepandemic levels — indeed, Dave & Buster’s recently lifted its sales forecast, as nearly all of its beer-and-arcade bars have reopened.
Two more ratios that Mr. Mazing suggest comparing are Netflix versus Live Nation and Peloton versus Planet Fitness.
The first is also nearly back to where it was before the pandemic: Live Nation is preparing for a packed concert schedule, selling tickets to people who may have already binge-watched all of “Below Deck.”
The second, however, suggests that people aren’t as eager to get back to huffing and puffing at the gym as they are content to exercise at home. As restrictions lift and people feel safer in crowds, drinking and dancing appear to be higher priorities.
George Greenfield, the founder of CreativeWell, a literary agency in Montclair, N.J., applied for a loan in March with Biz2Credit. The initial amount he was offered was less than a quarter of what he was eligible for.Credit…Ed Kashi for The New York Times
The government’s $788 billion relief effort for small businesses ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic, the Paycheck Protection Program, is ending as it began, with the initiative’s final days mired in chaos and confusion.
Millions of applicants are seeking money from the scant handful of lenders still making the government-backed loans. Hundreds of thousands of people are stuck in limbo, waiting to find out if they will receive their approved loans — some of which have been stalled for months because of errors or glitches. Lenders are overwhelmed, and borrowers are panicking, The New York Times’s Stacy Cowley reports.
The relief program had been scheduled to keep taking applications until May 31. But two weeks ago, its manager, the Small Business Administration, announced that the program’s $292 billion in financing for forgivable loans this year had nearly run out and that it would immediately stop processing most new applications.
Then the government threw another curveball: The Small Business Administration decided that the remaining money, around $9 billion, would be available only through community financial institutions, a small group of specially designated institutions that focus on underserved communities.
A roll of steel is packaged and labeled.Credit…Taylor Glascock for The New York Times
The American steel industry is experiencing a comeback that few would have predicted even months ago.
Steel prices are at record highs and demand is surging as businesses step up production amid an easing of pandemic restrictions. Steel makers have consolidated in the past year, allowing them to exert more control over supply. Tariffs on foreign steel imposed by the Trump administration have kept cheaper imports out. And steel companies are hiring again, The New York Times’s Matt Phillips reports.
It’s not clear how long the boom will last. This week, the Biden administration began discussions with European Union trade officials about global steel markets. Some steel workers and executives believe that could lead to an eventual pullback of the Trump-era tariffs, which are widely credited for spurring the turnaround in the steel industry.
Record prices for steel are not going to reverse decades of job losses. Since the early 1960s, employment in the steel industry has fallen more than 75 percent. More than 400,000 jobs disappeared as foreign competition grew and as the industry shifted toward production processes that required fewer workers. But the price surge is delivering some optimism to steel towns across the country, especially after job losses during the pandemic pushed American steel employment to the lowest level on record.
Shareholders of Tribune Publishing, the owner of major metropolitan newspapers like the The Chicago Tribune and The New York Daily News, will vote on Friday on whether to approve the company’s saleto Alden Global Capital, a financial investor with a reputation for slashing costs and cutting jobs. Alden already holds a 32 percent stake in Tribune, so the deal hinges on approval from the shareholders who own the other two-thirds of Tribune’s stock. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire medical entrepreneur who owns The Los Angeles Times and other California papers with his wife, Michele B. Chan, has a 24 percent stake in Tribune. Dr. Soon-Shiong has not commented publicly on how he intends to vote.
CNN said on Thursday that its prime-time host Chris Cuomo inappropriately offered public-relations advice to his brother, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, after a series of sexual harassment allegations threatened the governor’s political career earlier this year. CNN said Chris Cuomo would refrain from any more similar discussions with the governor’s staff. But the network said it would take no disciplinary action against the anchor, whose program was CNN’s highest-rated show in the first quarter of the year. Chris Cuomo apologized to viewers and his colleagues at the start of Thursday’s show for the calls with the governor’s staff, saying: “It will not happen again. It was a mistake.” But he also defended himself, saying that he “of course” gave advice to his brother and that he was “family first, job second.”
The hedge fund that wants to buy Tribune Publishing, the owner of some of the nation’s major metropolitan newspapers, has one final hurdle to cross.
Shareholders of the newspaper company, whose titles include The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and The New York Daily News, will vote on Friday on whether to approve the company’s sale to Alden Global Capital, an investor with a reputation for slashing costs and cutting jobs at the approximately 200 newspapers it already owns.
Alden’s effort to buy Tribune has faced resistance: Journalists at Tribune’s papers protested the sale and publicly pleaded for another buyer to step in. A Maryland hotel executive who had planned to purchase the The Baltimore Sun offered a glimmer of hope when he emerged with a last-minute offer for the entire company. He was backed for a brief time by a Swiss billionaire.
But the rival bid never fully came together, so the choice facing Tribune’s shareholders is to approve or reject Alden’s offer. Tribune’s board has recommended that they vote for the sale.
Chicago Tribune Guild president, begged Dr. Soon-Shiong to vote “No” on Friday.
“As Tribune Publishing’s second-largest shareholder, you can single-handedly keep Alden from sealing the deal,” Mr. Pratt wrote. “We’re not asking you to buy the company, though that would be great. But we are asking you to use your power to stop Alden from consolidating its own.”
Alden began buying up news outlets more than a decade ago and owns MediaNews Group, the second-largest newspaper group in the country, with titles including The Denver Post and The Boston Herald. While buying a newspaper may sound like a questionable investment in an era of shrinking print circulation and advertising, Alden has found a way to eke out a profit by laying off workers, cutting costs and selling off real estate.
“Alden’s playbook is pretty straightforward: Buy low, cut deeper,” said Jim Friedlich, the chief executive of The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, a journalism nonprofit that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer. “There’s little reason to believe that Alden will approach full ownership of Tribune any differently than they have their other news properties.”
Stewart W. Bainum Jr., the hotel magnate from Baltimore who made a last-ditch effort to rival Alden’s bid.
Today in Business
“This is the strategic logic of the acquisition, and one would hope — but not expect — that the savings from these synergies will be reinvested in local journalism and digital transformation,” he said.
Tribune, Alden Global Capital and Mr. Bainum declined to comment ahead of the vote.
Tribune agreed in February to sell to Alden, which had pursued ownership for years, in a deal that valued Tribune at roughly $630 million.
While a sale to Alden now seems inevitable, the twists and turns of recent weeks had seemed to favor Tribune’s reporters.
Mr. Bainum emerged as a potential savior in February, when he announced that he would establish a nonprofit to buy The Baltimore Sun and other Maryland newspapers from Alden once its purchase of Tribune went through. But his deal with Alden soon ran aground as negotiations stalled over the operating agreements that would be in effect as the papers were transferred.
So Mr. Bainum made a bid for the whole company on March 16, outmatching Alden with an offer that valued the company at about $680 million. He was then joined by Hansjörg Wyss, a Swiss billionaire who lives in Wyoming and had expressed an interest in owning The Chicago Tribune. Mr. Bainum would have put up $100 million, with Mr. Wyss financing the rest.
Tribune agreed to consider the bid from the pair, who formed a company called Newslight, saying on April 5 that it would enter negotiations because it had determined that the deal could lead to a “superior proposal.” Part of the discussions included access to Tribune’s finances.
exiting the bid after his associates reviewed the books. Part of the reason for his decision, according to people with knowledge of the matter, was the realization that his plans to transform the Chicago newspaper into a competitive national daily would be near impossible to pull off.
Mr. Bainum notified Tribune on April 30 that he would increase the amount of money that he would personally put toward the financing from $100 million to $300 million, as he hunted for like-minded investors to replace Mr. Wyss. In addition to needing to fund the balance of his bid, $380 million, Mr. Bainum’s offer was contingent on finding someone to take on responsibility for The Chicago Tribune, according to three people with knowledge of the discussions.
Queen Elizabeth II’s Lasting Legacy On Britain And The World
Interior Department Restricts Water Supply To Multiple Western States
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