Thread by @Matt_Fleming321

1/ Gannet(USA TODAY)/NewMedia sealed a billion dollar merger at the end of 2019 making it the largest corporate chain of local newspapers in the country, and its controlled by a few hedge funds. 🧵

nytimes.com/2019/11/19/bus…

2/ The merger was facilitated by Apollo Global Mgt and the first thing they did was to plan layoffs for journalism staffs, which had already been decimated by cuts over the last two decades as the internet has rapidly replaced print news in profitability.

latimes.com/business/story…

3/ New Media was owned by SoftBank, a Japanese owned investment firm with what seemed at the time to be a pretty soft spot for Trump, and an eagerness to aggressively expand it's direct foreign investments in the U.S.

niemanlab.org/2017/02/newson…

4/ NewMedia has a reputation for decimating journalism and turning news outlets into...well whatever you want to call it. In an 11 page memo, the Journalists/Writers Union called it a bad deal.

newsguild.org/mediaguild3/wp…

5/ Apollo Global Management is the company that financed the billion-dollar merger(buyout). In the last 5 years, their investments in media have been very large...but most surprising was their aquisition of Constellis(#EricPrince #Blackwater)

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Gl…

6/ Earlier this year, Apollo Global's founder Leon Black resigned after it was discovered he had given rapist/human trafficker Jeffery Epstein at least $158 million dollars.

theguardian.com/us-news/2021/m…

7/ Making things even murkier was the connections to the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, largest individual donor to the GOP. He didn't like the Las Vegas Journal covering a court case, so he just bought the newspaper. It worked.

businessinsider.com/the-editor-of-…

8/ Gannet sealed a nearly $500 million deal to advertise sports books. A pretty sweet deal for everyone...except for the newspapers themselves, journalists, taxpayers(yes), sports, sports fans, readers, advertisers, athletes...

#OperationOrangeJuice

seekingalpha.com/article/446146…

9/ I'm sure the casino people would never use the credibility of a newspaper to lie about betting odds.

🙄

espn.com/chalk/story/_/…

10/ So what will become of the news then, are we to see the same kind of abuse of the public trust that Sinclair Media engaged in when they did their mass apology across their TONS of local news stations?

#FakeNews
#OperationAvalanche

11/ With Bryan @BWilliams quitting @MSNBC, Chris Wallace moving to @CNN, and publications like the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times all sliding to the right, the distortive effect has already been measured.

allsides.com/blog/how-does-…

12/ In innocent little 'ol Florida, the coordinated and staggeringly dishonest coverage of Mom's For Liberty with a top-down professional political operation has already become apparent.

#OperationOrangeJuice
#MomsForLobotomy

13/ And wouldn't you know it, #BrevardCounty's Tina Descovich, co-founder of Mom's For Liberty is like best buds with State Rep. Randy Fine...a FKN CASINO GUY!

#OperationIvy
#MomsForLobotomy

14/ And for me, this is the kicker. Gannett was formed from the success of @FloridaToday, a local newspaper birthed right here in #BrevardCounty, grew into @USATODAY, and eventually a fortune 500 company. Guaranteed Al Neuharth is rolling in his grave.

adage.com/article/media/…

/15 I have been lucky to have been a guest columnist with Florida Today, and despite these cuts and perditions, vulture-capitalists bastardizing their good name, they are still winning awards and producing excellent writing and journalism.

google.com/amp/s/amp.flor…