Will Anyone Care? The Pasadena Star News Pulls The Plug On On-Line Commenting

Mod: I am an on-line Pasadena Star News subscriber, and as such I was privileged to receive the following email this week:

Beginning July 1, we will no longer be hosting comments on our websites. We understand that comments can be a good way to interact with other members of the community, and we appreciate feedback from our readers. 

However, we have found that very few readers engage with the comments, and even fewer actually leave comments. Open comments can also be difficult to moderate and sometimes become forums for spam, or worse, abusive and hateful speech that is not in line with our desire to host a free exchange of ideas in a manner that is courteous and respectful. And finally, in addition to our analysis of user engagement, site testing has shown us that removing the comments widget improves load times and user experience. 

As always, we love to hear from our readers, and social media provides an excellent forum for community engagement. If you have any questions or would like to share your thoughts on this change, we invite you to email us at commenting@medianewsgroup.com.

The Pasadena Star News website used to have a pretty lively community of commenting readers a number of years back, but due to whiny complaints the paper began restricting many of those folks. The result being people gave up and went elsewhere, or just stopped communicating altogether. PSN just didn't care to hear from their readers any longer. Besides, what could be more embarrassing than real people speaking their minds? It's a wild world out there.

But I believe there is another contributing factor. The Pasadena Star News, and all of its sister papers in this corner of God's challenge (Southern California News Group as they call themselves), aren't really Los Angeles newspapers. At least not editorially. They are owned by a rather immense New York hedge fund called Alden Global Capital, a politically reactionary confab interested in propagating only one certain political persuasion. That unfortunately being Trumpism. Alden owns hundreds of newspapers nationwide, all of which uniformly excrete the same MAGA scat.

Here is how their approach to the newspaper business is described on Wikipedia (link):

Alden has a reputation for sharply cutting costs by reducing the number of journalists working on its newspapers. In March 2018, Margaret Sullivan, the media columnist for The Washington Post, called Alden"one of the most ruthless of the corporate strip-miners seemingly intent on destroying local journalism."Vanity Fair dubbed Alden the "grim reaper of American newspapers." Alden received critical coverage from the editorial staff at the Denver Post, who described Alden Global Capital as "vulture capitalists" after multiple staff layoffs.  

Not exactly Clark Kent. Or Perry White, for that matter. 

Where is Alden Global Capital on the political scale? Hard right. A space with minimal support in the far more cosmopolitan Los Angeles County domain. An organization called "Save Local News," which is made up of the sorts of journalists fired by Alden, published the following on their website a while back.

Alden owner is deeply in Trump’s camp now (Save Local Newslink):On a sweltering July afternoon last year, Sen. Elizabeth Warren unveiled proposed legislation aimed at making hedge funds and private equity firms more transparent and accountable. Less than two weeks later, Alden Global Capital co-founder Randall Smith gave $50,000 to Donald Trump’s “Trump Victory” fund. The same day, his wife Barbara gave exactly the same amount.

Both provided Alden’s office in Manhattan’s Lipstick Building as their address. Alden is the hedge fund most recently described as “the gelatinous cube scouring the news industry’s dungeon.” Or, more simply, as a “destroyer of newspapers.”

It’s also arguably the most secretive news chain owner in the country. As a privately held “vulture” hedge fund, we don’t know who Alden’s investors are. Its funds are based in tax secrecy havens like the Cayman Islands and Delaware.

I had no idea my $35 in Star News subscription dough might now be cooling in the Cayman Islands. The things we learn when we take a look.

My favorite example of the irrelevancy of the Southern California News Group to Los Angeles County is the Gavin Newsom recall election. Despite an untold number of Newsom bashing editorials, columns and articles from the SCNG's stable of tiresome knuckle-bouncers, here the vote to do just that was laughably small. 

Here is how NBC News Los Angeles tallied the results (link):

According to the official count from the LA County Voter Registrar/County Clerk's office, LA County voters were even more strongly in favor of keeping Newsom in office than the state as a whole. A total of 2,263,071 ballots were cast in LA county alone. An overwhelming 1,598,140 of those votes were "no" votes, with 70.85% of voters in the election choosing to keep Newsom in office. The remaining 657,584 ballots were "yes" votes in favor of recalling Newsom, coming up to 29.15% of the county's total votes in the election. 

29%. Embarrassing, right? The Pasadena Star News, along with its sister papers in the area, apparently have little political influence locally. Which makes sense. They are attempting to impose an extremist editorial political philosophy that has little to do with the Southern California cities they claim to speak for.

Which could be a reason why reader commenting is now dead and buried on the Pasadena Star News website. Nobody wants to talk to the alien political presence of a newspaper whose mysterious controlling interests cash your subscription checks in the Cayman Islands. Which is not in any Los Angeles County city I know about. 

Have an awesome 4th of July. I'll be back Wednesday, if not sooner.

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