In 2011, a Wall Street hedge fund, Alden Global Capital, started buying up chains of newspapers nationwide.Alden found a way to profit from distressed industries, but the effects on the newspapers’ journalism were disastrous. In 2015, reporter Julie Reynolds began investigating this hedge fund that had bought her own small-town daily along with more than 100 other newspapers nationwide.She exposed how these self-described “vulture capitalists” would strip the newspapers of their real estate, gut their newsrooms and run away with the profits.Reynolds' reporting reached The Denver Post’s Chuck Plunkett, whose subsequent editorial criticizing Alden would trigger the “Denver Rebellion.” Much has been written about the precipitous decline in local journalism.Our film takes it one step further: “Yes, journalism is in crisis, but what are we doing about it?”
Biography:
Rick Goldsmith is a twice-Academy-Award-nominated documentary filmmaker. His films as producer/director: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2009) (co-produced/co-directed with Judith Ehrlich), nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, tells the story of a leading Pentagon strategist whose daring act of conscience leads directly to Watergate and the end of the war in Vietnam. It was broadcast on POV, for which it won a Peabody Award, and again in 2017-18 on MSNBC. Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press (1996), also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, chronicles the life of a pioneering muckraking journalist and press critic. It was broadcast nationwide on public television and has become a staple in college and high school journalism programs everywhere. Just as Holdsclaw begins to embrace her emotional challenges and emerge as an outspoken mental health advocate, she encounters new obstacles to her own recovery. Mind/Game is narrated by Glenn Close, a SAMHSA Voice award winner, and was broadcast on Logo. Goldsmith is also an editor and sound recordist, and a member of the Documentary Branch of AMPAS; IDA; Writers Guild of America West; and New Day Films.
