Olenka Hamilton
The US investment firm Redbird has withdrawn from its deal to buy The Telegraph. The fate of another iconic British publication, the Catholic Herald, which was bought in 2023 by $3.4bn alternative asset firm GEM NY, offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of being taken over by private equity firms, especially American ones.
After only two years of GEM’s involvement, the Catholic Herald is about to go to only four issues a year, down from 12, and most of its staff have walked out.
The once mighty Herald, which in its post-war glory days used to boast a 100,000 weekly Sunday newspaper circulation and operate from its own building off Fleet Street, now has its British HQ in a “hot-desk” corner of Westminster Library. When I joined the magazine part-time in 2019, it was one of the most civilised places in Britain, or possibly the world, to work. We operated from Herald House, a Dickensian old building next to the Barbican – with its own church – owned by the diocese of Westminster.
That it was falling to pieces and you had to walk up five floors to reach editorial didn’t matter. The staff, then headed by Luke Coppen, were courteous, brilliant, marvellously eccentric and, most importantly, superb at what they did, miraculously putting out 50 extremely high-quality weekly issues a year.
I realised at the time what a privilege it was for a young journalist like me to be working in such a professional and historic media organisation.
Lack of money, however, became a serious problem during the pandemic when churches were closed and distribution effectively cut off. The directors were under enormous pressure to find new investment. Finally, the New York-based GEM NY, who had recently had success with selling an iconic French fashion magazine for $57m, acquired a controlling stake in the 135-year old magazine which had a 100-year-plus digital archive and whose writers used to include GK Chesterton, Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene.
GEM NY was run by “good New York Catholics with a lot of money who wanted to give something back”, we were told. They would hire brilliant consultants who would turn the Catholic Herald into a global brand and we would just continue as normal. With America having 80 million Catholics, compared to just 3 million in the UK, having a new focus on the USA – where conservative Catholics help to shape political conversation in a way that doesn’t happen here – made sense.
More: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/sad-fate-catholic-herald-warning-092600729.html
