#Journalist behind Chicago Tribune sale effort gets new watchdog gig

The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who tried to engineer a buyout of the Chicago Tribune has joined a not-for-profit watchdog organization that’s been investigating government corruption since the days of Al Capone.

“After waging a campaign for a new owner — and losing — resigning and moving on just felt like the honorable thing to do,” said David Jackson, who resigned from Tribune last month after a 29-year career and this week landed a job as a senior investigative reporter at the Better Government Association. “I couldn’t just go back and whistle while I worked,” he told Media Ink.

After winning a Pulitzer while with The Washington Post, Jackson spent most of his career in Chicago investigating everything from sexual violence against students in public schools to overseas fugitives to rogue cops and nursing home abuses.

The Chicago-based Better Government Association, a government watchdog organization, recently added nine journalists to its staff thanks to new funding provided by the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, the Alvin Baum Family Fund and local civic leader Jim Mabie.

Jackson and his reporting partner Gary Marx made national headlines back in January with an op-ed in The New York Times calling on Tribune owners to sell to the Chi Town paper to a benevolent local owner. The op-ed came amid staff cuts and growing unease over expectations that the publisher of the New York Daily News, the Baltimore Sun and the Hartford Courant could soon he owned by hedge fund Alden Global Management, known for the steep cuts it has made at newspaper chains it controls.

In the quest to find Tribune a new owner, Jackson contacted over 150 interested parties, he said. “We talked to 150 or so, ranging from civic-minded groups to wealthy individuals,” Jackson said. “We kept hearing through the grapevine that Alden was not interested in selling,” he said.

Alden, a New York based hedge fund headed by Heath Freeman, had taken a 32-percent stake in the publisher’s stock in November 2019, and was expected to acquire more after June 30 when a stand-still agreement it had signed was set to expire.

Alden instead extended its standstill agreement for another year.

Dr. Patrick Soon Shiong, the Los Angeles Times owner who also owns 25 percent of Tribune stock, was expected by many to sell to Alden when his own standstill agreement expired on June 30. But he did not.

Of Jackson Soon Shiong said: “I get a sense that he has a reputation that he wants to preserve as a protector of local journalism.”