Hedged

How Private Investment Funds Helped Destroy American Newspapers and Undermine Democracy
Author: Margot Susca
The untold history of an American catastrophe
Cloth – $110
978-0-252-04546-2
Paper – $24.95
978-0-252-08756-1
eBook – $14.95
978-0-252-05508-9
Publication Date
Paperback: 01/23/2024
Cloth: 01/23/2024
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About the Book

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.

About the Author

Margot Susca is an assistant professor in the School of Communication at American University.

Reviews

"Timely and incisive." --Kirkus

"This damning debut from American University communications professor Susca examines how 'overharvesting profits, the debt born of mergers and acquisitions, and the greed of private investment funds' has hollowed out newspapers across the country over the past 20 years. . . . Readers will be outraged." --Publishers Weekly

"Susca has written a valuable guide to this world of greed, unbound by any sense of mission beyond lining the pockets of wealthy investors. As we move into the post-newspaper era, it would serve all of us who care about local news and its role in fostering civic life to look back at what happened, and what is happening still." --Arts Fuse

"A worthy inclusion for many graduate courses focused on media and society and media ethics. Moreover, one could include this in a graduate course on research methods as an exemplar use of mixed methodology. Hedged offers value for communication and media scholars and teachers. If you want to understand why it is so hard to get a job at a newspaper or why local journalism and democracy are in trouble, you should read Hedged" --Communication Research Trends

"A rigorously sourced recent history of news ownership, dealing with a daunting number of documents and hundreds of hours of interviews, offering a broad look at the practices and ultimate consequences of private equity ownership in the news industry." --Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

Blurbs

“Hedged shines a light on one of the most underdiscussed and underappreciated parts of the collapse of local news--the role of hedge funds and private equity firms. It’s an important book for anyone who wants to truly understand the decline of local journalism or who wants to craft solutions.”--Steven Waldman, president and cofounder of Report for America