Nicht nur Axel Springer hat Ambitionen in den USA. Auch das Finanzkapital übernimmt gerade eine Zeitung nach der anderen. Money Quote (es geht um die Chicaco Tribune):

In May, the Tribune was acquired by Alden Global Capital, a secretive hedge fund that has quickly, and with remarkable ease, become one of the largest newspaper operators in the country. The new owners did not fly to Chicago to address the staff, nor did they bother with paeans to the vital civic role of journalism. Instead, they gutted the place.

Two days after the deal was finalized, Alden announced an aggressive round of buyouts. In the ensuing exodus, the paper lost the Metro columnist who had championed the occupants of a troubled public-housing complex, and the editor who maintained a homicide database that the police couldn’t manipulate, and the photographer who had produced beautiful portraits of the state’s undocumented immigrants, and the investigative reporter who’d helped expose the governor’s offshore shell companies. When it was over, a quarter of the newsroom was gone.

Das waren bestimmt bloß die unprofitablen Leute, die da rausgeflogen sind. So Leute, die eine nicht von der Polizei manipulierbare Datenbank von unnatürlichen Todesfällen betreiben. Sich mit dem Gouverneur anlegen ist nicht good for business.

Das muss diese unsichtbare Hand sein, von der man immer so viel hört. (Danke, Gaston)