This Saturday is the DC broadcast premier (Saturday, 10/11 at 9:30pm on WETA) of Stripped for Parts, a new documentary* by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Rick Goldsmith that tells the story of working journalists who expose and heroically resist Alden Global Capital, the vulture hedge fund that takes over their newspapers and, well, strips them for parts. Some of these heroes, like Julie Reynolds, turn their investigative lens on their new owners, exposing a business model premised on the methodical destruction of local newspapers. Others, like the brave journalists at The Denver Post, raise the alarm bell in their own pages, with a full page spread of op-eds that call out their new owners and call on the community for support. Unfortunately the film doesn’t have a tidy, happy ending, as billionaire saviors lose courage and local papers continue to be bought and squeezed. Interestingly, some of the journalists in Stripped find new homes in independent, internet-first publications that are exploring new ways to sustain local news. Their efforts teach us two important lessons: saving local journalism isn’t as simple as giving owners of legacy assets new tools for extracting resources from the papers they’re bleeding dry, and journalists need a free and open internet as much as anyone else.

And yet, the so-called “Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA)” gets this lesson backwards, letting Alden and others form cartels and charge a tax on links and summaries online. Like the valuable real estate, worker pensions, and other assets of newspapers they own, the JCPA windfall would go directly into the pockets of a few mysterious hedge fund bros who will continue to gleefully dismantle local news. It’s easy to see why newspaper owners would love this bill, but it’s a mystery why Congress would fall for it. Hopefully a few legislators will tune in this weekend and see the light.

*(Disclosure: My law firm provided copyright counsel for the film.)