Thursday, May 15, 2014

Disappearing Ink: Former Journalists Say The Decline Of The Salt Lake Tribune Stems From A Conspiracy Between The Paper's Corporate Owner And The LDS Church

Imagine, if you will,  a world where the Deseret News winds up as Northern Utah's only remaining major newspaper, peeps 
In any situation where there’s a quasi theocracy ... any state where it’s politically or religiously dominated, an independent voice or a countervoice for that matter, is critical to the survival of diverse thinking.
My sense is that the entire industry has tried to lay print to rest before it’s ready to die, and I see that as a mistake. I think the revenue most places still comes from print—most of the revenue—and that’s why the new split hurts the Tribune so much.
Much of what the Tribune does, involves going to court with the government over open-records requests—an often thankless and costly process undertaken so that Utahns know the business being conducted on their behalf. [The Tribune has] always been a very strong, strong investigative watchdog newspaper. I’d hate to see it go. It would be a bad thing.

The Trib Receives a
D-News "Warm Embrace"
Humdinger of a journalistic tour de force from Salt Lake City Weekly this morning, for those WCF readers who'd like to fully bone up on the current plight of Salt Lake City's top-selling newspaper, the Salt Lake Tribune.  A giant Weber County Forum Tip O' the Hat to SLWeekly reporter Colby Frazier, for one of the most robust and well-researched journalistic pieces which we've featured on these WCF pages in years. Read up, folks:
Within this morning's story, Mr. Frazier has embedded this handy link, which opens this important online petition:
We urge all WCF readers to chime in on this right now. Can't hurt; might help.

Imagine, if you will,  a world where the Deseret News winds up as Northern Utah's only remaining major newspaper, peeps.  If that distressing prospect won't motivate you to take immediate political action, we suppose nothing will.  For a little extra inspiration however, please view the image embedded above, which lays it all out in graphic form, wethinks.

1 comment:

Bob Becker said...

More evidence that, week in and week out, the paper that produces the best investigative journalism in Utah is the alt-paper, The City Weekly. The Trib (about to go on life-support) is second. The sadly diminished "new improved" (?) Ogden Daily Selenium (the Se) says it's getting back into the investigative reporting game, but we'll have to see if they mean it. Nothing much yet.


Since the Se's "new improved" (?) Comment-posting software discourages conversations developing on-line, the survival of the Trib which still encourages on-line discussions of its articles ( and so of public issues) --- when the Trib invites its readers to "join the discussion," it means it; he Se no longer does --- it's survival matters. Be a shame for northern Utah newspaper readers to be left with only the DI ("churchly comment only, please") and the Se ("comment if you must; we don't care") as options.

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