Hedged : How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy (The History of Media and Communication)

Susca, Margot

University of Illinois Press（2024/01発売）

• 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 232 p.
• 言語 ENG
• 商品コード 9780252045462
• DDC分類 071.30905

Full Description

The untold history of an American catastrophe The ultrawealthy largely own and guide the newspaper system in the United States. Through entities like hedge funds and private equity firms, this investor class continues to dismantle the one institution meant to give voice to average citizens in a democracy.

Margot Susca reveals the little-known history of how private investment took over the newspaper industry. Drawing on a political economy of media, Susca's analysis uses in-depth interviews and documentary evidence to examine issues surrounding ownership and power. Susca also traces the scorched-earth policies of layoffs, debt, cash-outs, and wholesale newspaper closings left behind by private investors and the effects of the devastation on the future of news and information. Throughout, Susca reveals an industry rocked less by external forces like lost ad revenue and more by ownership and management obsessed with profit and beholden to private fund interests that feel no responsibility toward journalism or the public it is meant to serve.

Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: What Crisis

The Private Investment Era
Democracy for Sum
Profit Harvesting
Mergers and Acquisitions
The Debt
Layoffs
Neglected Audiences

Conclusion: Ending the Era Notes

Index