“Every day means the turn of a page.”—The Rolling Stones, “Yesterday’s Papers”
When New York-based hedge fund Alden Global Capital and its subsidiary MediaNews Group purchased the Santa Rosa Press Democrat last May for a reported $10 million, the question swirling throughout the 128-year-old daily newspaper was: What changes are in store—for employees, the newsroom and the quality of journalism going forward at the Pulitzer Prize-winning publication?
The answers in the short term were as telling as they were rapid: A number of layoffs and some consolidation occurred almost immediately. What it means in the longer term is opaque—stasis or a slow bleed are the more optimistic scenarios put forth by local media watchdogs.
That’s because Alden Global’s reputation as an owner of newspapers precedes itself, especially in media circles. Once described in Vanity Fair as “the grim reaper of American newspapers,” AGC is known for buying up financially challenged publications, consolidating departments, cutting staff and selling off assets. Since going on a newspaper buying binge in the late 2000s, the hedge fund has stuck consistently to its formula of so-called “rightsizing” newspapers, or as it prefers, “distressed opportunities.”
In many ways, any conjecture at the Press Democrat and its former parent company Sonoma Media Investments about what a future under Alden Global would look like are largely superfluous. The question has been answered—at other newspapers, many times over.
One early example that drew national attention is the Mercury, a once-thriving publication covering Pottstown, Pennsylvania, a borough of 24,000 people about a 90-minute drive from Philadelphia. Pottstown has enough goings on for the Mercury to have once supported 30 editorial staff—a mix of reporters, photographers, editors and everyone else needed to cover city hall, sports, features, crime and schools in a community. The Mercury was acquired by Alden Global Capital in 2011. AGC sold the newspaper’s building, cut staff and offered buyouts to remaining employees. Today, there’s a single writer covering news in Pottstown, a mix of beats that once warranted 10 reporters. The Mercury’s online news site, pottsmerc.com, is a long list of Associated Press stories, with a smattering of regional news bylined by reporters from its so-called “Philadelphia cluster” of seven local mastheads also purchased and “rightsized” by Alden Global.
North Bay media watchdogs can also look closer to home—the Marin Independent Journal in San Rafael has been an Alden Global asset since 2010, when the hedge fund became majority owner of the IJ’s parent company MediaNews Group. Within a year, the paper had relocated from its longtime home in Novato to a smaller office building in Terra Linda (headquarters now is an even smaller space in an industrial area of San Rafael). Layoffs and buyouts over the years have reduced its once-thriving newsroom to a smattering of editors and reporters, each covering multiple beats throughout the county of more than 250,000. In a story NBb published in September about the PD sale, one IJ reporter described the newsroom situation as a “skeleton crew” plagued by low pay and even lower morale.
Whether that proves to be the trajectory of the Press Democrat is anyone’s guess. One former IJ editor commented on social media that Alden could turn the two dailies into a single North Bay Journal. It wasn’t clear if she was joking.
Systemic, unsustainable
In the nine months since the sale, the Press Democrat has downsized. Sources within the PD newsroom in October confirmed five newsroom layoffs (three photographers, two reporters), as well as two editors and a copy editor leaving for other jobs, while another longtime journalist accepted a buyout offer. Across the company, 52 employees—around 40% of the staff—had either left or been let go in Alden’s first four months of ownership, including its CEO, COO, the entire human resources department, among other positions consolidated into MediaNews’s general operations, sources within the company have told NBb.
One of those employees to get a taste of Alden’s recipe is former Chief Operations Officer Troy Niday, who’d been with Sonoma Media Investments for more than 10 years before being laid off in the wake of last May’s buyout. The Rohnert Park resident had overseen SMI’s production, distribution, consumer revenue and audience development efforts since 2014. A Nebraska native, Niday got his start in newspaper circulation at the Omaha World-Herald before moving on to direct circulation at the Arizona Republic, the Oklahoman and then running circulation and production operations at four Newhouse newspapers in Alabama. He is a past president of the International News Media Association’s North American board and was active in several industry associations in leadership roles.
To say Niday has ink in his blood might be literal.
Having witnessed the shrinking of community led journalism over the past 30 years, the sale of his once-locally-owned hometown daily to Alden Global is particularly jarring to Niday, 62.
“In the 1990s, 70 to 80% of all media companies were owned locally, now 70 to 80% are corporate owned,” says Niday. “The financial reality has changed from local stewardship to corporate absentee stewardship focused more on the money than on journalism.”
Adds Niday: “It is systemic. And it is unsustainable.”
Mark Twain is credited with having said: “A newspaper is not just for reporting the news as it is, but to make people mad enough to do something about it.”
Five months after the PD was sold to “the grim reaper of American newspapers,” Niday decided to do something about it.
In September, Niday announced plans for Press Onward, a nonprofit, community-based digital newsroom with a simultaneously simple and ambitious promise: “To restore robust local news, strengthen civic engagement and safeguard democracy right here at home.”
The Press Onward announcement described the state of local journalism in Sonoma County as in crisis—with the Press Democrat gutted by corporate ownership leaving its remaining staff under resourced to effectively cover city councils, school boards or pressing topics like housing and the immigrant community. Press Onward, in its mission statement, vows to “deliver transparent, independent and community-centered journalism that informs, connects and empowers the people of Sonoma County.”
Says Niday: “[Press Onward] is a response to the money being the incentive, not the journalism.”
The nonprofit model
Just as a Press Democrat under Alden Global Capital ownership has its antecedents, Press Onward’s forebears are in such nonprofit digital newsrooms as the East Bay-based Cityside, Lookout Santa Cruz and CalMatters, which covers statewide issues out of Sacramento.
Lance Knobel, Tracey Taylor and Frances Dinkelspiel cofounded online news site Berkeleyside in 2009. They launched the nonprofit Cityside Journalism Initiative in 2019 and expanded their coverage area by adding the Oaklandside news site in 2020, followed by Richmondside in 2024. The expansion of Berkeleyside and conversion to nonprofit status under the Cityside umbrella came at a time of media consolidation in the East Bay, when several MediaNews Group publications—including the dailies Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times, along with smaller brands—merged to become the East Bay Times in 2016.
“We kind of know the Alden playbook,” Knobel says of MediaNews’s parent company. “The long-term prospects of [the Press Democrat] remaining a healthy newsroom aren’t great.”
He believes the formation of a similar digital newsroom in Sonoma County is sound. “I’m sure there will be an increasing need [for it],” he predicts.
Niday’s plan for Press Onward is to start like a “small, scrappy startup”—get the site up and running and grow from there. He envisions launching with a newsroom of six to eight journalists, working out of a central location “where people can come and engage with us.”
Press Onward’s financial foundation will be a mix of revenue streams—donations/philanthropy, reader memberships and advertising/sponsorships. Niday is hoping to partner with as many as 20 founding investors for the seed money to get the initiative off the ground. The Phase 1 plan is to hit an initial benchmark of $250,000, at which point Press Onward can enter into an agreement with Newswell, a nonprofit arm of Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism. Launched in 2024, Newswell is a growing network of nonprofit news outlets which share backend resources like CMS, accounting services, HR, legal advice, and consulting for audience, membership and advertising growth. Once under the Newswell umbrella, says Niday, “I can go start hiring journalists.” His goal is to raise another $1.2 million from local donors to fund journalists, or perhaps a particular news beat such as agriculture or city hall.
“So far [there’s been] a high level of interest and acute awareness of need—and a high level of concern over the degrading local information ecosystem,” Niday says.
Always an audience for good journalism
Former Press Democrat Managing Editor John D’Anna saw the writing on the wall last spring.
Three days after receiving an offer letter for the managing editor position he’d been pursuing with CalMatters, the announcement came May 1 that the PD had been sold to Alden Global Capital.
“We all knew it was coming,” D’Anna says about the widely reported negotiations to sell the PD, though most understood Hearst Corp., publisher of the San Francisco Chronicle, as the destination for the Santa Rosa daily.
While D’Anna concedes a sale to Hearst seemed the likeliest scenario, “I think anybody who’s watched the industry should have known Alden would sweep in,” D’Anna says. “People felt blindsided, but they shouldn’t have been.”
Now eight months into his new gig with CalMatters, D’Anna holds a unique perspective on journalism within both privately held and nonprofit news media. In many ways, he says, there are more similarities than differences. “[With privately owned media] advertisers want audience, so you’re constantly looking at audience. With a nonprofit, donors want impact, so you’re looking at impact more than audience numbers.
“But it’s all similar because good journalism drives audience and impact.”
D’Anna’s been following Niday’s efforts to launch Press Onward and believes if anyone has the “business sense and acumen to pull this off,” it’s him. Still, he describes it as a “big lift” to “get the nonprofit news model up and running and build the plane as you’re flying it.”
He says Press Onward’s challenge will be garnering sufficient support for a Sonoma County digital newsroom, while any long-term effects of Alden’s PD ownership have yet to be felt by the community.
Despite the initial cuts and consolidation, says D’Anna, “I don’t think they’ve rendered Santa Rosa a news desert yet.
“But that’s clearly where it’s going to go.”
For Niday, it’s not a question of replacing the Press Democrat.
“There’s already not enough quality local journalism in Sonoma County or any local market,” he says. “We need the PD to succeed—and [Press Onward] to add value above and beyond what they can.”
About the community
If everything falls into place, Niday hopes to launch Press Onward in mid-2026. In the meantime, he continues an active community engagement tour—and says that kind of outreach will be an ongoing component of Press Onward’s community presence. So far he’s hearing calls for coverage of issues that have presented increasing challenges to the community in recent years: housing affordability, homelessness, Santa Rosa’s ability to recruit new businesses, school performance, changing wine-consumption habits, the next-generation dairy industry, and telling the stories of the Latino community. “People have opinions,” Niday is quick to say.
Before Press Onward can tell those stories, however, Niday will balance his time between the engagement circuit and the fundraising circuit.
Knobel knows that balance well. Donations are going to be a big part of Press Onward’s model, the Cityside cofounder says. “It’s never easy getting money from people,” he says. But given the North Bay’s relative affluence and reputation for community engagement, “they’ve got a good shot.” And once the site builds an audience, ad revenue will follow, he adds.
One note of caution, Knobel stresses, is that fundraising has its ups and downs. “There’s something exciting about launching something and that’s the easiest time to attract funding—on the ground floor,” Knobel says. “It’s tougher to say to people, ‘You love what we do, let’s sustain this.’”
Adds Knobel: “But that’s the case with nonprofits in general—people like funding new things.”
Toward that, Knobel and his Cityside team have come to appreciate the distinction between small donors and major donors. “Small donors are a fantastic thing,” he says. Cityside currently has about 8,500 members, who average between $120 and $130 a year in dues. Last year, for the first time, Cityside’s small-dollar donors accounted for more than $1 million in revenue for the nonprofit.
“I think [Press Onward] will find a similar market where people love and care about where they live and will be supportive of somebody providing the news and information they rely on,” he says. “And if thousands of people support you, $30 a year can add up to a lot.”
Based on his more than three years as managing editor for the Press Democrat, D’Anna says Sonoma County’s news readership is as committed as any he’s ever seen. “It’s a market that wants to engage with local news—and getting increasingly frustrated with what they’re getting from the PD,” he says, while stressing the daily still has a highly talented newsroom. And that’s why a nonprofit digital news site will have to hit the ground at full speed, he adds. “You can’t have one story a week and let that sit stagnant on your website—you have to build volume and velocity.”
Niday believes Press Onward is coming as part of a groundswell for the nonprofit digital news model. He points to the Institute for Nonprofit News as evidence—that industry trade group launched in 2017 and now boasts membership of 500 independent news organizations, employing nearly 4,100 journalists. What’s more, its 2025 INN Index reports a 14% revenue increase across its 400 digital-first nonprofit newsrooms from 2023 to 2024, alongside a 10% rise in the number of outlets included in the survey.
“This has arrived, it’s catching on across the country,” says Niday about nonprofit digital news. “It’s been a 30-year road that has gotten us to the point where we’re at today
“This model flips that scale back to where it’s about the community—not the profit.”
Those interested in learning more can contact Troy Niday at tniday@press-onward.org. Donations are being accepted through the Community Foundation Sonoma County website’s Donate page at sonomacf.org/donate. The Press Onward fund is at the bottom of the page.
