Media Education Foundation
STRIPPED FOR PARTS tell the remarkable story of a handful of journalists fighting back against a secretive hedge fund that's gutting newspapers nationwide.
American Journalism on the Brink
A film by Rick Goldsmith
Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink is a presentation of New Day Films.
Hedge fund Alden Global Capital is quietly gobbling up newspapers across the country and gutting them, but no one knows why -- until journalist Julie Reynolds begins to investigate. Her findings trigger rebellions across the country by journalists working at Alden-owned newspapers. Backed by the NewsGuild union, the newsmen and women go toe-to-toe with their “vulture capitalist” owners in a battle to save and rebuild local journalism in America. Who will control the future of America’s news ecosystem: Wall Street billionaires concerned only with profit, or those who see journalism as an essential public service, the lifeblood of our democracy? Stripped for Parts: American Journalism on the Brink tells the remarkable inside story of the journalists fighting to ensure Wall Street doesn't get the final say.
United Nations Association Film Festival 2023
St. Louis Inter’l Film Festival
2023
Santa Fe International Film Festival
2023
Reel Work
May Day Labor Film Festival
2024
Double Exposure Film Festival
2023
Minneapolis St Paul Inter’l Film Festival
2024
Best Documentary, 2023 United Nations Association Film Festival
Rose F. and Charles L. Klotzer First Amendment Award for Free Speech in Service of Democracy, 2023 Gateway Journalism Review
Maysles Bros. Lifetime Achievement Award, 2023 St. Louis International Film Festival Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ)
NorCal Award for Documentary Film, 2024
“Stripped for Parts does exactly what a good socially conscious documentary should do —identifies an urgent problem, explains how we got here, why it matters, and, most important, considers what we should do about it.”
— Victor Pickard, Professor of Media Policy and Political Economy, University of Pennsylvania
“Goldsmith is an amazing storyteller, able to take the important and little-understood topic about how U.S. newspapers are being destroyed by corporate greed and explain it in a compelling way. Everyone in a community that is vulnerable to the loss of their journalistic “voice” needs to watch Stripped for Parts."
— Mike Blinder, Publisher and editor, Editor & Publisher Magazine
“Stripped for Parts is like a creepy horror movie, where the villain is a hedge fund that gobbles up newspaper after newspaper and proceeds to cannibalize them with gruesome efficiency. The plot twist is how those inside this particular house — reporters and editors — improbably band together to fight back.”
— David Barstow, New York Times investigative reporter and four-time Pulitzer Prize winner