October 22, 2021

I’ve been thinking about Oceania a bit of late.  Of course, when I refer to Oceania, I am referring to the area of today’s world that encompasses Australia, New Zealand, and Polynesia.  Exploring the west coast of Australia and driving the highway from Perth to Darwin is still on the bucket list so I’ve been staring at a calendar of 2022 to see when that might happen, particularly because I’m in the throes of replanning my trip to Portugal in the spring.  However, there is another Oceania that is related to what is going on in the US today.

As you might recall, Oceania is the name given to the dystopian, totalitarian superstate that was the setting for George Orwell’s famous novel, 1984.  The reason I bring this up is because one of hallmarks of Orwell’s Oceania was the use of ‘Newspeak’, a language that was specifically designed and developed to limit and control people’s thoughts.  In fact, Newspeak is even defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. The dictionary defines Newspeak as, “propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings.”¹

I don’t know how this cannot come to mind when we read the news about Trump launching the Trump Media & Technology Group.  What particularly caught my eye was the reported launch of the ‘Truth Social’ app that is designed to compete with Twitter, which Trump has been banned from using because of a flood of lies, misinformation and inflammatory rhetoric – essentially what Orwell termed ‘Newspeak’.  It is just unbelievably ironic that a man who is known as an inveterate liar would launch a social media platform called ‘Truth Social.’

On the one hand, I’m not all that worried because given Trump’s track record with running businesses into the ground and leaving investors holding the bag, I suspect the Trump Media and Technology Group will ultimately suffer the same fate as Trump Airlines, Trump Beverages, Trump: The Game, Trump Casinos, Trump Magazine, Trump Steaks, etc.² You get the idea.  He has a long and ‘distinguished’ history of failed businesses, angry creditors and disenchanted investors in his wake.  I suspect that the Trump Media and Technology Group will suffer the same fate.  It is, however, disturbing that and investors at all are willing to invest millions of dollars to launch a company that is nothing other than an attempt to broadcast ‘Newspeak’ to a gullible populace.

In this same vein, yesterday I read an article in The Atlantic, entitled “Who Killed America’s Newspapers? by journalist McKay Coppins.   It was actually quite shocking and I’m ashamed to say that it was really the first time I became aware of what appears to be going on in the newspaper business.  Of course, that appears to be by design because the company that is behind all of this is a very secretive company.  I suspect that most people outside of the newspaper business have never heard of the Alden Global Capital hedge fund.  That is unfortunate because what this company is doing could have serious consequences for our country.

It is no secret that newspapers have been struggling to survive amidst the move to everything digital.  “In the past 15 years, more thana quarter of American newspapers have gone out of business.  Those that have survived are smaller, weaker, and more vulnerable to acquisition.  Today, half of all daily newspapers in the U.S. are controlled by financial firms, according to an analysis by the Financial Times, and the number is almost certain to grow.”³

The Alden Global Capital hedge fund has acquired, gutted and essentially dismantled not only small, local papers but well-known papers such as the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun.  The model is very simple: gut the staff, sell the real estate, jack up subscription prices and wring out as much cash as possible.  The two principals behind this hedge fund are Randall Smith and Heath Freeman.  Both of these men are very secretive, rarely give interviews, and rarely even set foot on the properties they acquire.  They have shown zero interest at all in journalism but rather buy these properties to squeeze as much cash as possible out of them before they finally go under.

The most disturbing part of all of this are the social consequences that accompany this trend.  And the cynical part of me believes, given the secretive nature of the principals and the hedge fund, that this is by design.  “When a local newspaper vanishes, research shows, it tends to correspond with lower voter turnout, increased polarization, and a general erosion of civic engagement.  Misinformation proliferates.  City budgets balloon, along with corruption and dysfunction.  The consequences can influence national politics as well; and analysis by Politico found that Donald Trump performed best during the 2016 election in places with limited access to local news.”³

It doesn’t take a genius to see where all of this might lead.  You have the Republicans pushing all kinds of laws restricting voting, you have a secretive hedge fund buying up and killing newspapers around the country, and you have Trump launching the ‘Truth Social’ app which will flood the airwaves with ‘Newspeak.’  George Orwell was much more prescient than any of us ever believed when we read his novel in high school.  Welcome to 1984!

So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to walk across the street to get my morning newspaper which could be an interesting walk.  The Fish and Game folks installed a bear trap across the street because ‘Mr. Bear’ is still around and causing mischief in the neighborhood.  If I don’t write tomorrow you’ll know that the score is:  Bear 1, Mike 0. 

1. Newspeak | Definition of Newspeak by Merriam-Webster
2. Donald Trump’s 13 Biggest Business Failures – Rolling Stone
3. The Atlantic, November 2021, “Who Killed America’s Newspapers?”, McKay Coppins