“What happens when billionaires with no background or interest in serving the public, who are only in it for profit, take over our most important news organizations? What new models of news gathering and dissemination hold promise for our increasingly digital age? What can the public do to preserve and support live journalism?"
This is a published summary for the documentary Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink. Published by the news industry magazine Editor and Publisher (dated from 1901). 
This week his podcast interviewed director Rick Goldsmith about his 90-minute documentary, which they say "recounts" how hedge fund Alden Global Capital broke into the news industry and then "dismantled the local paper." , creating a crisis within the communities they serve, leaving in their wake "news deserts" and "phantoms".
Goldsmith spent more than 5 years creating his latest work… a film that tells the story of why the newspaper business model is faltering, not only due to the loss of advertising and digital disruption, but capitalist greed, as hedge funds and corporate America buys them, and sells them leaving the communities they serve without a local "voice" and control of power.
In the podcast, Goldsmith states that in many cases a newspaper's assets "newspaper buildings and printing presses" were worth far more than the newspapers themselves. After laying off staff, the hedge fund began selling the buildings as well.
By 2021 Alden Global Capital owned 100 newspapers and 200 publications — then acquired Tribune Publishing to become America's second-largest newspaper publisher.
The hedge fund currently owns several newspapers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Goldsmith's documentary delivers bad news but avoids despair, offering some hope on the horizon.
Where aggressive reporting is needed the traditional capitalist business model fails, and non-profit organizations should take over at least local coverage.
