EXCLUSIVE: In a 2021 article, The Atlantic explored the decline of local journalism in this country, citing among many examples the once-proud Chicago Tribune. The paper’s newsroom, formerly housed in the grandly Gothic Tribune Tower, the article noted, had relocated to a space “the size of a Chipotle.”
The piece, written by McKay Coppins, was titled “A Secretive Hedge Fund Is Gutting Newsrooms.” Subtitle: “Inside Alden Global Capital.”
Three years later, Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rick Goldsmith picks up that torch with his documentary Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink, a film that shines an even more glaring light on Alden Global Capital, owner of Tribune Publishing, the Southern California News Group, MediaNews Group, and other newspaper holdings. (In 2019, Alden tried but failed to take over Gannett, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher by circulation).
Stripped for Parts begins a theatrical run October 4 at the Laemmle Royal in Los Angeles. We have your first look at the documentary in the trailer above.
“Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink is the story of one secretive hedge fund that is plundering America’s newspapers and the journalists who are fighting back,” notes a synopsis of the film. “Investigative reporter Julie Reynolds, Denver Post editorialist Chuck Plunkett and a handful of others, backed by the NewsGuild union, go toe-to-toe with the faceless Alden Global Capital in a battle to save and rebuild local journalism across America. Who will control the future of America’s news ecosystem: Wall Street billionaires concerned only with profit, or those who see journalism as an essential public service and the lifeblood of our democracy?”
Stripped for Parts has won numerous awards, including Best Documentary at the United Nations Association Film Festival, the Rose F. and Charles L. Klotzer First Amendment Award for Free Speech in Service of Democracy from the Gateway Journalism Review, and the Society of Professional Journalists NorCal award for Documentary Film. Last year, Goldsmith was honored with the Maysles Bros. Lifetime Achievement Award at the St. Louis International Film Festival.
Among the participants in the documentary are Greg Moore, editor of the Denver Post during the time Alden took over the paper; investigative reporter Thomas Peele; Gary Marx and David Jackson of the Chicago Tribune; Larry Ryckman, editor and co-founder of the Colorado Sun, and as noted above, investigative reporter Julie Reynolds and the Denver Post’s Chuck Plunkett.
“My goal in making this film was less to expose Alden Global Capital to the world and more to give the film’s audiences a feel for these men and women, who risked their reputations and/or their livelihoods, to save, re-invent, and rebuild journalism,” Goldsmith writes in a director’s statement. “Each of them believed in their own profession, as one that serves as the lifeblood of democracy. The interviews were enriching. I felt honored they trusted me enough to let me into their lives, to answer my questions openly.”
Goldsmith continues, “I consider Stripped for Parts their collective story, and as important as the thousands of stories they have written over their careers, so that the rest of us can understand more completely the complex social and political events that swirl around us. I hope my film does them right.”
Director Rick Goldsmith
Timothy Hiatt/Getty Images for Ebertfest
Goldsmith has earned two Academy Award nominations for documentaries with journalism themes: The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers (2010), and Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press (1997). His other directing credits include Mind/Game: The Unquiet Journey of Chamique Holdsclaw (2015), and Everyday Heroes (2001).
Brant Houston, Knight Chair Professor in Investigative and Enterprise Reporting at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, writes of Stripped for Parts, “The public finally has a documentary that clearly shows what has happened, and is still happening, to local news, while giving hope that the numerous nonprofit newsrooms starting up around the nation may restore some of what is being lost.”
Watch the trailer for Stripped for Parts above.