Petition to Tribune Publishing’s Board of Directors

Dec. 11, 2019

To the Tribune Publishing Board of Directors:

We, the undersigned employees of Tribune Publishing, urge you to take immediate steps to reaffirm your commitment to journalism — the engine that powers this company — and to fair economic investment in newsroom staffing and resources.

We ask this in light of the board's expansion to include representatives of a hedge fund with a troubling record of diminishing newspapers’ abilities to cover their communities. Alden Global Capital has been described as a “destroyer of newspapers,” with a well-documented history of extracting short-term profits from already-lean operations by cutting newsroom jobs and denying fair wages and benefits.

To follow Alden's path would not only undermine employee morale and foment labor conflict but would violate your fiduciary responsibility to shareholders and your duty to maximize the company's value, to both its customers and to its shareholders, over the long term.

That's why we are asking you to take the following specific steps to help preserve our institutions:

● Commit to increased staffing and investments in news and business opportunities;

● Consider in good faith any offers from outside entities that would return Tribune

Publishing papers to civic-minded and/or local ownership;

● Continue contract negotiations with your unionized employees in an efficient and respectful manner, and voluntarily recognize any new unions that file for recognition;

● Support a shareholder resolution filed this month on behalf of members of Tribune Publishing’s bargaining units that requests an annual sustainability report on your core product: journalism.

Such a report is a routine and established way for companies to report on the economic, environmental and societal impacts of its business decisions. This is crucial information for investors, particularly as the number of seats on the board expands to include two Alden representatives.

We urge you to present this shareholder resolution for a vote and to consider what you would like your first sustainability report to say about Tribune Publishing.

This first report could note the board's success in growing digital subscription and advertising revenue because of their strategic investments in journalism, user experience and advertising capabilities.

Or, it could document the destruction of our storied and vital institutions and the end of our ability to serve our communities, both at the hands of disinterested hedge-fund operators.

We urge you to take these steps and to consider your legacy here with Tribune Publishing.

Respectfully,