1/ Tribune Publishing shareholders just let the hedge fund Alden Global Capital buy the company. This is terrible news for the Chicago Tribune and all our sister newspapers. It's also terrible news for the communities these papers cover and, I'd argue, for the country.
2/ So I'm going to take a moment to feel angry, disappointed and a bit scared. Then I'm going to do exactly what my colleagues here in Chicago, and my colleagues in Baltimore and New York and Hartford and Orlando and in newsrooms across the country, will do: get back to work.
3/ I can't be bothered with people who view newspapers as businesses to be squeezed for profit, or as disposable investments. None of us got into this to make money. We got into it because we have the unshakable ailment of giving a damn about the word around us and wanting to...
4/ ...find ways to make it better, in whatever small way we can. Some do it through investigations that quite literally save and change lives. Some do it through features that enlighten and inform. Some do it with surgical editing skills, some do it from behind a camera, or by...
5/ ...covering beats like hawks. Some do it by making readers laugh, or think, or cry. It's the sum of all those parts that makes a newspaper great, and the desire to do such things can't be dictated by hedge funds or feckless billionaires who lack the courage to take a stand.
6/ So we will work. And we will continue to do our very best for our readers and our communities. And we will fight like hell, and as one, against anyone who puts dollar signs above democracy. Because, at the end of the day, this is what we do.
7/ I'm so proud of my fellow @CTGuild members who worked tirelessly to find a civic-minded benefactor to save Tribune Publishing. It didn't work yet, but it still might. I cling naively to hope and the belief that good might prevail. But until then, we work. We do good stuff.
8/ As for me, personally, I'll say what I've said for some time: I'm going to keep doing this until they tell me I can't do it anymore.
Thanks to everyone in all our communities for your support. We'll need more of it in the weeks and months to come. Stay strong. ✊ END
Thanks to everyone in all our communities for your support. We'll need more of it in the weeks and months to come. Stay strong. ✊ END
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
