How to grab the attention of a US senator: Buy a big stake in a local newspaper.

Sen. Chuck Schumer said he will be watching Heath Freeman’s Alden Global Capital “like a hawk” after the New York hedge fund famous for slashing newspaper jobs announced it bought a 25 percent stake in Tribune Publishing, owner of the New York Daily News.

Schumer said that he feared the move by Alden “could spell doom” for the Daily News, which he called “one of NY’s oldest, proudest institutions.”

“The sheer thought that some hedge fund, which believes in destroying value to make a quick buck could send in a machete to New York’s ‘hometown newspaper’ should worry us all and is why I will be watching the new majority owners like a hawk,” Schumer said Wednesday.

Alden Global Capital on Tuesday paid $118 million to buy the 25.4 percent stock stake held by former Tribune Publishing chair Michael Ferro, who was the single largest shareholder in the company, which includes the Chicago Tribune, the Hartford Courant and the Baltimore Sun.

Alden, which bought the Denver Post and the Boston Herald through Digital First Media, paid $13 a share for Ferro’s stake — a considerable premium above its Tuesday closing price of $9.73 a share.

Alden did not respond to a call from The Post regarding Schumer’s blast and what Alden’s future plans may be with Tribune. But Alden’s after-hours purchase on Tuesday sent Tribune stock soaring 15 percent Wednesday, to $11.18.

Alden has been described as a destroyer of local media for buying newspapers, chopping staff to the bone and selling off real estate. This isn’t the first time the fund has landed on Schumer’s radar.

The senior senator went after Alden earlier this year when it mounted an unsuccessful hostile takeover bid against USA Today publisher Gannett, which has a number of newspapers in upstate New York as well as the Journal News in Westchester and Rockland.