“The purchase of Tribune reaffirms our commitment to the newspaper industry and our focus on getting publications to a place where they can operate sustainably over the long term,” Heath Freeman, the president of Alden, said in a statement Friday after the shareholder meeting. Tribune didn’t immediately reply to requests for comment.

The vote on Friday had required approval by two-thirds of the shares held by investors other than Alden, which holds a 32 percent stake in Tribune, to pass.

The company’s second-largest shareholder, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who owns a 24 percent stake in Tribune, did not cast a vote, his spokeswoman said on Friday.

“For the past several years, Tribune Publishing has been a passive investment, as he has remained focused on the leadership roles he holds across his companies,” Dr. Soon-Shiong’s spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.

Dr. Soon-Shiong was seen as the last hope by Tribune employees who opposed the sale to Alden because a no vote from him would’ve blocked the deal. “You can single-handedly keep Alden from sealing the deal,” Gregory Pratt, the Chicago Tribune Guild president, wrote in a letter to Dr. Soon-Shiong posted on Medium this week.

Alden began buying up news outlets more than a decade ago and owns MediaNews Group, the second-largest newspaper group in the country, with titles including The Denver Post and The Boston Herald. While buying a newspaper may sound like a questionable investment in an era of shrinking print circulation and advertising, Alden has found a way to eke out a profit by laying off workers, cutting costs and selling off real estate.

“Alden’s playbook is pretty straightforward: Buy low, cut deeper,” said Jim Friedlich, the chief executive of The Lenfest Institute for Journalism, a journalism nonprofit that owns The Philadelphia Inquirer. “There’s little reason to believe that Alden will approach full ownership of Tribune any differently than they have their other news properties.”

The hedge fund’s first priority would be to consolidate operations of Tribune with those of its other newspapers, resulting in job losses and cost savings, predicted Mr. Friedlich, who served as an unpaid adviser to Mr. Bainum.