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The Denver Post’s ‘Hedge Fund Catch 22’ Paywall

Originally published in the Colorado Independent . It's important to note that the Longmont Times-Call is owned by the same company and hedge fund manager, Randall Duncan Smith , as the Denver Post.
Longmont Observer
The Denver Post Building
Source: The Colorado Independent.

This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.

Originally published in the Colorado Independent.  It's important to note that the Longmont Times-Call is owned by the same company and hedge fund manager, Randall Duncan Smith, as the Denver Post.

By Corey Hutchins

Last week, Denver Post staffers “rallied around their paper’s new $11.99-per-month paywall, optimistic that the move might bring more resources to a beleaguered Post newsroom,” I wrote for Columbia Journalism Review’s United States Project. “But the paywall goes up at a rocky time for Colorado’s largest newspaper, in which layoffs, an impending move, and the sudden resignation of its publisher have left some at the paper feeling destabilized.”

The piece asks a question I and others thought should be asked given the recent years of public commentary— some of it coming from within the Post’s own newsroom— about the Digital First Media (DFM) paper’s hedge-fund owner.To wit, from the piece:

"During one week in 2016, Denver’s 5280 and alt-weekly Westword each published in-depth stories that scrutinized the private equity firm that controls DFM, an entity that has drawn the ire of union organizers at DFM papers across the country. This week, The Los Angeles Times reported “significant” impending newsroom layoffs at the Southern California News Group, a DFM-owned constellation of nearly a dozen daily papers and as many weeklies.”

So…

"As The Denver Post asks its readers to pay for online content, some readers naturally might wonder if doing so will mean an investment into the newsroom and no more cuts, or a boost to corporate profits as layoffs continue."

It’s the “hedge fund Catch 22,” as Matt Sebastian, city editor of The Boulder Daily Camera, also owned by DFM, said. Some of the Post’s journalists were getting asked that question, too. Find out what The Denver Post’s editor had to say in the full story here. And make a point to read through reporter John Ingold’s Twitter posts about the situation and his impassioned plea for readers to help support the Post’s important work.