Opinion | Alden’s move to end candidate endorsements feels like cowardice

We’re probably past the point at which newspaper endorsements for national office have value. Maybe they never did: You had few other places to turn for guidance on local elections — other than your racist uncle, of course, but you could ignore him — while opinions about national affairs have always been readily at hand.

So maybe it doesn’t matter that the nation’s second-largest newspaper group tells its newsrooms to stop endorsing for national and statewide offices. But it sure smells bad.

For one thing, Alden Global Capital — a venture-capital company so notorious for cutting costs that it is widely referred to a vulture-capital company — never gives its newsrooms guidance about content. Its edicts start with a dollar sign and the word “cut,” and end with a dollar sign and the word “cut.” That’s about it. If anything, Alden doesn’t seem to care about content at all. (It’s sad to think of indifference as a virtue, but if you’re dealing with uncaring greedheads, perhaps you should celebrate being ignored.) 

And yet now Alden believes, according to an editorial appearing in most of its 200 U.S. newspapers, that “… as the public discourse has become increasingly acrimonious, common ground has become a no-man’s land between the clashing forces of the culture wars.” Putting aside for the moment that its declaration makes no sense — common ground and no-man’s land are similar things — it’s hard to believe that people who have done so much to destroy journalism and communities now present themselves as the champions of good citizenship. 

And destroy they have. Alden’s modus operandi is to acquire newspapers and to maximize profits quickly by cutting staff, selling their buildings, moving printing operations hours away — necessitating deadlines so early that newspapers become useless — and raising subscription rates. If this doesn’t sound like a strategy to sustain businesses, that’s because it isn’t. 

There’s a cost for this, and all of us pay it: The absence of robust news sources leads to lower voter turnout, increased polarization, the erosion of civic engagement, the increased possibility of corruption, and the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories, according to research by Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. 

And while the problem is widespread as newspapers are gobbled up by hedge funds and private-equity groups, a study by the School of Media and Journalism at the University of North Carolina found that Alden’s tactics are the worst: It cut its newsrooms at twice the rate of other companies. Too bad, too, because Alden’s properties include such celebrated titles as the Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post, New York Daily News and The Baltimore Sun.

So how is it that such callous cheapskates suddenly espouse civility and good citizenship?

There is one thing Alden’s ban on endorsing candidates in presidential, senate and gubernatorial races would do: quiet all those left-of-center endorsements. Let’s not kid ourselves: The spectrum of opinion on most newspaper editorial boards runs the gamut from liberal to liberal. Kill all endorsements and you muzzle those darn lefties.

The weakness in Alden’s policy is evident in its own arguments. Public discourse has become too acrimonious, as Alden states. That’s an argument for well-reasoned, objective assessments of candidates and policy. It’s not a reason to stop it.

Alden states that because “misinformation and disinformation are on the rise, readers are often confused” about the differences between news and opinion. True, many readers don’t appreciate that a newspaper’s opinion and news staffs are distinct and that the former does not influence the latter. That’s an argument to educate conspiracy theorists, not give in to them. Where does that end: If too many people believe that legitimate news organizations purvey fake news, should we not bother with it? 

Newspapers don’t have to endorse candidates. Some never have. Many have stopped. That’s fine. But at some point, Alden’s policy seems less like noblesse oblige and more like cowardice. It should adhere to what it knows best: pinching pennies. The upstanding-citizen shtick is out of its element. 

Disclosure: Saltz worked for two entities, MediaNews Group and Tribune Publishing, that are now part of Alden. Neither was part of Alden when he worked for them, however.

Howard Saltz is on the journalism faculty at Florida International University in Miami. A Pulitzer Prize-winning editor, he is the former publisher and editor-in-chief of the South Florida Sun Sentinel in Fort Lauderdale, and the former vice president for digital content at MediaNews Group in Denver. He can be reached at hsaltz@gmail.com, hsaltz@fiu.edu or via HowardSaltz.com.