“I love journalists,” Rick Goldsmith told his audience at the Ware Center.
Goldsmith has been making films about reporters and newspapers since the beginning of his career. Two have been nominated for Academy Awards: “The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers” and “Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press.”
On Wednesday, he was in Lancaster for a screening of his latest work: “Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink.”
Stemming from an article Goldsmith read in 2018, it documents the predatory business practices of Alden Global Capital. It acquires local newspapers through its company Digital First Media, then profits by selling off assets and laying off staff. Alden’s leaders, Randall Smith and Heath Freeman, are multimillionaires.
The showing was part of Millersville’s “On Screen | In Person” series, opening the 2024-25 season. The series features local panelists who comment on the film beforehand, then a Q&A with the director afterward.
The industry that Alden targets is one that was already struggling to adjust to the digital age, which decimated the local advertising model that had sustained it. More than 2,000 newspapers have closed in the 21st century, creating news deserts in many parts of the country.
While “Stripped for Parts” is unsparing about the stakes, it also provides reasons for hope: Journalists fighting back against Alden, at the Denver Post and elsewhere, and launching new media ventures, often nonprofit and online.
Panelist reactions
Alden’s business practices aren’t unique to the media, said panelist Rob Spicer, assistant professor of communication at Millersville: Hedge funds are doing the same thing in other industries. They get away with it, he said, because “American capitalism is broken,” privileging individuals’ right to profit over the public interest.
Powerful people want to hide their misbehavior, and dismantling journalism is one way to do that, he said. Arguably, the profit they generate in the courst of doing so is secondary.
Panelist Evan Brandt appears in “Stripped for Parts.” He is one of just two reporters remaining at the Pottstown Mercury following Alden’s acquisition, down from 15 in the late 1990s.
“I’ve lived through everything that you’ll see in the film,” he said: Layoffs, budget cuts, and the resulting loss of coverage. The Mercury newsroom was closed down, so he now works out of his attic.
Seven years ago, he visited Freeman’s mansion on Long Island and ended up speaking briefly with him. Thanks to the notoriety he generated, he has become, in his words, “the poster child for ghost newspapers.”
It’s frustrating, he said: “No matter how much you try, you know that what you’re doing is inadequate.”
Panelist Tom Murse said he was struck by the anguish of the editors in the film as they contemplate the budget cuts and layoffs that Alden demands. Yes, he said, the business model of local news is broken, but the goal should be to take the pieces and build something new, not tear it down the rest of the way.
Murse is executive editor of LNP and vice president of journalism at WITF, the public broadcaster with which LNP merged in 2023. They are supported by the Steinman Institute for Civic Engagement.
Murse recalled his early career when Lancaster had two daily papers, the Intelligencer Journal and the New Era, as well as the Sunday news. Competition is healthy, he said: In the film, Denver Post editor Greg Moore celebrates the paper’s rivalry with the Rocky Mountain News, which ended with the latter’s demise in 2009.
One United Lancaster provides an additional local voice in the topic areas it covers, Editor Tim Stuhldreher said: City and county government, nonprofits, and the social issues nonprofits deal with: Health, affordable housing, economic security and so on.
Sponsored by United Way of Lancaster County, One United Lancaster illustrates in some respects the potential of the nonprofit model, Stuhldreher said. But it shows the limitations, too: It’s a lean operation, but it’s not self-sustaining and has to draw on United Way support.
Journalists are professionals, he said, and the vast majority do their level best to report as objectively and straightforwardly as they can. Communities used to be knit together by shared agreement on the facts, Brandt said, but that doesn’t exist any more and it’s a huge concern: “What’s at stake is participatory democracy.”
Jess King is executive director of the Steinman Institute. What excites her, she said, is the topic broached toward the end of the film: The future of news and the development of new models.
“There is hope and there is a future in this space, because it has to be,” she said.
“We have we have to have local news and information for our democracy to survive, for our communities to flourish.”
During a brief Q&A, the panel was asked how they deal with denunciations of local media by elected officials.
“By continuing to report on them and to not back down,” Murse said, to applause. “… We’re not afraid of those people and we’ll continue to show up.”
What lies ahead
King led the Q&A with Goldsmith after the screening. The story he tells in “Stripped for Parts” appealed to him, he told her, because journalists were fighting back and telling their own story for a change.
“It felt like a terrific contest and battle, which is what you want in a good film, but also a very, very important issue,” he said.
King asked him what he thinks the future of journalism looks like. The challenges are broadly the same across the country, but the solutions are varying from community to community, he said.
Encouragingly, there are as many young people interested in journalism as ever, he said. He described recently meeting an eighth grader who had founded his school newspaper two years before, and how excited the youth was to show off his work.
In touring the country to promote the film, Goldsmith said he’s seen a lot of cooperation and new partnerships — including many alliances between newspapers and public radio stations, like LNP and WITF.
“Communities understand that this is a problem that is not going to fix itself, and that has to be addressed,” he said.