• by Ray Schultz , May 4, 2025

Alden Global Capital, which acquired Tribune Publishing for $633 million in 2021, is back in action on the M&A front.

Its MediaNews Group has purchased Sonoma Media Investments (SMI) -- parent of several California publications, including the The Santa Rosa Press Democrat, Sonoma Magazine and five other North Bay titles. 

The terms were not disclosed.  

Sonoma Media Investments management says media companies face “economic challenges” that they did not when investors grouped together to buy the publications in 2012. 

“This is particularly true for local media like ours,” wrote Darius Anderson, managing member of Sonoma Media Investments, and Steve Falk, former CEO. “It has become difficult for a small group of local investors to guarantee the paper’s long-term future.”

Alden Global Capital owns 68 daily newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune and New York Daily News, and more than 300 weekly publications.

Based in Denver, MediaNews also runs such California publications as the San Jose Mercury News and the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“We are honored to bring a newspaper of this quality into MediaNews Group,” says Frank Pine, executive editor of MediaNews Group. “We appreciate the importance of local news and information to the communities where we publish and are proud to expand our commitment to Northern California in the North Bay.”

The Press Democrat was founded in 1897 and owned by the New York Times Company for a time. It earned a Pulitzer Prize for local news coverage in 2018.