In a gloomy media landscape, the Santa Rosa Press Democrat offered a sprout of hope. Locally owned and fiercely independent, its owners had resisted the deep cutbacks that afflict news organizations everywhere, creating a North Bay news ecosystem that set a national example for quality regional journalism.
That hope died this month. On May 1, The Press Democrat was sold to the nation’s largest private newspaper operator, shifting business decisions to people without a strong stake in local news.
The purchase by MediaNews Group—controlled by the controversial New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital—consolidates the region’s news industry. MediaNews Group now owns nearly every daily newspaper in the Bay Area: the Marin Independent Journal, the East Bay Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Santa Cruz Sentinel and the Monterey Herald. Nationwide, the company owns 68 daily papers.
West Marin residents are concerned about the prospect of new owners with a reputation for cost-cutting and few ties to the region. In recent months, The Press Democrat has focused a spotlight on the Point Reyes National Seashore, supporting work by freelance journalist John Beck about the landmark deal to end ranching, the investigation by the Republican-led House Committee on Natural Resources and conversations between litigants and Trump administration officials.
“For years, The Press Democrat has done a great job covering stories important to us in West Marin,” said Point Reyes resident Burr Heneman, whose career began in journalism. “It’s been part of the community and one paper in the disappearing category of quality independent newspapers. Now it’s been vacuumed up by a hedge fund group known for strip-mining the papers it has taken over.”
Now only two North Bay papers—the Point Reyes Light and The Ark, which serves Tiburon, Belvedere and Strawberry, both weeklies—remain locally owned. The Pacific Sun/North Bay Bohemian and the Healdsburg Tribune, also weeklies, are owned by the San Jose-based Metro Newspapers.
“That scenario is unhealthy for this community and for this country,” said Marco Calavita, professor of communication and media studies at Sonoma State University. “At a time when the First Amendment and the whole idea of a free press informing the public is under virtually unprecedented attack, this crucial and relatively independent journalistic voice will now be owned and run by a global corporation that has hundreds of other media assets, and a reputation for ruthlessly cutting costs and laying off journalists.”
This week, in one of its first major moves, MediaNews offered voluntary buyouts, offering full-time employees considerably less than what is guaranteed for workforce reduction under its current contract, according to photographer Christopher Chung, president of the newsroom’s union.
It is not yet known how many staffers are expected to take the buyout, or what other steps the new owner will take. The terms of the sale were not disclosed.
“We will seek efficiencies in business operations, distribution and production while striving to support and prioritize the robust, local newsgathering needed to serve the communities that rely on Sonoma Media for excellence in journalism,” said MediaNews executive Sharon Ryan, who visited the Santa Rosa newsroom after the sale was announced on May 1.
Dubbed “the most reviled newspaper owner in the business” by Harvard’s Nieman Journalism Lab, Alden Global Capital has gained a reputation for buying distressed properties, consolidating papers, selling buildings and cutting staff. It’s the subject of Rick Goldsmith’s documentary film “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink.”
Under Alden’s ownership, the Bay Area News Group staff shrank from around 380 to 160 in 2018, and the cuts have continued, according to former executive editor Neil Chase, who now leads CalMatters. Alden shuttered the Oakland Tribune, the Contra Costa Times, the Hayward Daily Review and others, merging them into the East Bay Times.
“If past is prologue, Alden will quickly move to aggressively cut costs, reducing staff either through buyouts or layoffs and consolidating back-office functions,” said Tim Franklin, director of the Local News Initiative at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. “This not only would mean fewer journalists, but it would also mean less original local coverage in the communities they serve. The outlets could become vessels for news from elsewhere with more regional and national stories.”
He added, “When investment firms like Alden hoover up local news organizations, they often finance the acquisitions with debt. That means that a big chunk of the profits service the debt of the acquisition. They’re not reinvested back in local journalism.”
Sonoma Media Investments was the largest news organization between San Francisco and the Oregon border, with about 25,000 print subscribers and another 25,000 digital subscribers. Of about 170 company employees, 80 worked in the newsroom, then-company C.E.O. Eric Johnston said in a recent podcast interview.
Founded in 1857, The Press Democrat was locally owned for more than a century. In 1985, it was sold to the New York Times Company, and then to Florida-based Halifax Media Holdings. Its name reflects the politics of its founders—farmers who settled in the Santa Rosa and Russian River Valleys from Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee.
In 2012, Sonoma real estate developer Darius Anderson and his partners aimed to return the paper to local ownership and stabilize a valuable news source in the North Bay. With help from local investors and community leaders such as former Dolby Sound C.E.O. Bill Jasper, billionaire banker Sandy Weill and Jean Schulz, wife of the late “Peanuts” creator Charles Schulz, he assembled about $15 million in debt and equity funding to create Sonoma Media Investments.
“It was really heartening,” said Jim Bettinger, director emeritus of the esteemed John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University, who lives in Santa Rosa.
“It’s been an example of a place that ran counter to the trends,” he said. “After being corporately owned, it has devoted lots of resources to local news and coverage in the community. It owns several publications among which there is synergy.”
The Press Democrat became one of only a handful of other independently owned mid-sized dailies, including the Santa Fe New Mexican, the Galveston Daily News, the Charleston Post and Courier and The Advocate in Baton Rouge. Since 2004, the United States has lost one-fourth—or 2,100—of its newspapers.
Even as it bore the huge costs of printing and distributing newspapers around the region every morning, The Press Democrat’s connection to the community was reinvigorated.
Its nonprofit affiliate, the Press Democrat Journalism Trust, awarded college journalism scholarships, and the paper provided more than $2 million a year in sponsorship and marketing support to local organizations. It co-partnered on a speaker series called “Trust & Democracy” and hosted dozens of community events, such as the North Coast Food & Wine Festival, “Best of” gatherings and “Women in Conversation” evenings with newsmakers.
In 2018, the paper was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the highest award in American journalism, for its coverage of the Tubbs fire.
“It took effort and commitment,” Mr. Bettinger said. “And the community benefited from it.”
Only six months ago, Sonoma Media Investments’ then-C.E.O. praised this strategy. “We’re very fortunate that we have local ownership and local accountability with our ownership,” Mr. Johnston said.
He added, “A lot of venture capital, and a lot of vulture capital, is buying up these small community publishers, because there is still profit left if they pull out these critical resources—journalists and salespeople. They keep taking pieces out to pull profit with it.”
But in recent years, the newspaper industry has been further hollowed out by decreasing subscriptions and advertising shortfalls that intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We’re seeing a massive change of ownership in local news across the country these days,” Mr. Franklin said. “That’s because we’re all living through a historic, transformational change in how news is consumed, produced, distributed and paid for. All of this is leading to the collapse of the traditional, advertising-supported business model for local news.”
Press Democrat staffers had been braced for a sale. It was rumored that Hearst Corporation, publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, was the front runner. Staffers were cautiously optimistic, as Hearst vowed to expand its coverage of the North Bay and save money through consolidating business functions with the combined operations.
On the morning of May 1, in anticipation of the sale to Hearst, Press Democrat staffers met to compare the respective work contracts. But that afternoon, a surprise email from MediaNews landed in their inboxes, announcing the purchase.
“It was absolutely stunning,” said veteran investigative reporter Phil Barber, whose coverage recently revealed how developers Ken Mattson and Tim LeFever built a real estate empire of more than 120 Sonoma Valley properties that has crumbled amid a sea of investor lawsuits, bankruptcy court filings and an F.B.I. investigation.
“We were blindsided,” Mr. Barber said. “No one knew if the message was even real.”
In a statement, Mr. Anderson offered no explanation for the decision to sell to MediaNews rather than Hearst. He said the sale was driven by economic challenges that had grown since the paper was purchased, causing it to abandon its idealistic vision. “It has become difficult for a small group of local investors to guarantee the paper’s long-term future,” he wrote.
Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst for the Poynter Institute, a school and study center for working journalists, called it “an unhappy outcome for an excellent mid-sized paper—a sale to Hearst would have given a good chance to maintain that.”
Mr. Edmonds called the sale “doubly disappointing.” “When a local group bought The Press Democrat, it looked as if a community orientation, strong commitment to news and modest profit expectations were guaranteed. But as it happens, the ownership group got tired, probably of losses and the tough financial road ahead. And so they bailed,” he said.
The sale continues the trend of large chains controlling a large share of the nation’s newspapers. According to Medill, just 10 companies control more than half of all U.S. daily papers. Three of these chains—including Alden—are partially or fully owned by private equity groups or hedge funds.
In California, proposed legislation seeks to help protect local ownership. A.B. 611, the Keep News Independent Act, would require local media outlets to provide four months of advance notice to employees and subscribers before selling. According to the bill’s sponsor, Assemblymember Alex Lee, the notice would give newsroom staff and communities the chance to find alternatives to keep the outlet independently owned. It would not apply to papers selling to other independent owners.
“The thing that is most discouraging to me about the sale is that it just demonstrates, again, how hard it is to run a daily news organization in 2025,” Mr. Bettinger said. “The Press Democrat was an outlier—something that demonstrated that it wasn’t a completely discouraging horizon. And now that’s gone away.”