Stop the Press: How the Mormon Church Tried to Silence the Salt Lake Tribune - Softcover

James W. Ure

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1633883396 ISBN 13: 9781633883390

Publisher: Prometheus, 2018

Synopsis

This disturbing expose examines how the powerful Mormon Church tried to destroy the Salt Lake Tribune, a voice that had long been critical of many of its activities and its secrets. The author, a Mormon and a journalist who once worked for the Tribune, tells a story of secret deals, behind-the-scenes backstabbing, and manipulation of the political and legal systems by a church that controls the politics of Utah.
Based on many interviews and extensive research, the book describes the history of enmity between the Church and the newspaper, which came to a head in 2000. In that year, the Tribune reopened an investigation into an 1857 murder of a wagon train of 120 men, women, and children passing through Utah. The Mountain Meadow Massacre had been conducted by highly-placed church members and historians have said it was condoned by Brigham Young, the leader of the Mormon Church.
The published stories intensified efforts by the Church to kill the newspaper. When a hedge fund took ownership of the Tribune, the Church in 2013 saw an opportunity to take advantage and ensure the paper's demise. Just as the paper appeared to be going under, a small group of citizens became the David that took down the Mormon Goliath and delivered the Pulitzer Prize-winning paper to a steady local owner who is willing to fight for its long-term survival.
This is a cautionary tale about the dangers of mingling church and state and the ways in which big money can threaten the freedom of the press.

About this title

About the Author

James W. Ure is a freelance journalist and the author of six previous books, including Leaving the Fold: Candid Conversations with Inactive Mormons, for which he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the winner of numerous writing awards and is a Hearst Foundation Fellow. A former advertising executive, he has also worked as a publicist for and the executive director of the Sundance Film Festival. In addition, he ran his own marketing firm for almost twenty years. He has written articles for the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News, as well as for national magazines.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1 - BOMBSHELL

"Revenge proves its own executioner." - John Ford

To live in Salt Lake City you must choose sides.

You are either a “good” and obedient Mormon or else you join the side of the dissidents, dropouts, and non-Mormons. Termed the “Great Divide” in the nineteenth century, choosing sides is part of living in this city.

The con?icts between the two sides are historical, bitter, and even bloody. In this work they are seen through the prism of its two competing daily newspapers. This book sheds light on how the church in?uences and manages the politics, business, and the institutional ethos of the state of Utah.

The Deseret News was founded in 1850 by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (known as Mormons from their bible, the Book of Mormon). The News is a faith-promoting publication of the church and is embraced by active Mormons. Its editorial material is kept within the ?rm boundaries of mainstream Mormon thought. It represents the conservative Mormon establishment.

The Deseret News is the voice of a church founded in 1830. The Mormon Church has striven for recognition as a mainstream religion, surviving and thriving on the uniqueness of its founding, its past, and its beliefs.

The Salt Lake Tribune, founded in 1871 by active but dissident Mormons and owned for over a century by a Catholic family, had been the secular, critical watchdog of the Mormon Church. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and had grown in editorial stature and advertising lineage to become the newspaper of record for the city.

The Tribune had been called “the balance wheel of Utah causing it to take leadership in, or join, every cause that advanced the economic social and cultural welfare of Utah to the bene?t of all Utahns—Mormon and gentile alike.” The Tribune’s circulation had traditionally been about twice that of the Deseret News. The Tribune is a more liberal voice in a state often considered the reddest of the red.

The two dailies represented the opposing sides of the Great Divide, yet since 1952 they worked pro?tably as partners in a joint operating agreement (JOA). This agreement to combine printing, circulation, and advertising departments under a JOA brought together the leaders of both factions. Non-Mormons (called gentiles by members of the LDS Church) joined Mormons in the 1990s to secure the 2002 Winter Olympics. A feeling of conditional goodwill settled like a warm blanket over both sides of the divide. Most Salt Lakers thought the bitter history had reached détente.

They were wrong. As we shall see, the Mormon Church’s resentment toward the Tribune had smoldered for years.

At least as early as 1995 the Mormon Church was secretly maneuvering to acquire the Tribune. A nasty legal ?ght ensued, and by 2000 the Tribune’s Catholic owners were dismayed when a court case turned the newspaper over to a Mormon-friendly media conglomerate, MediaNews Group. After a series of ?nancial and legal missteps by the MediaNews Group, Alden Global Capital had come to own the Salt Lake Tribune. The New York–based Alden in 2012 was called the “grandfather of vulture investing” by the New York Post.

In 2013 the church saw an opening in the JOA that might enable it to take down the paper once and for all. In the autumn of that year the church made a secret deal with Alden to buy assets of the Tribune. The Mormon Church would then bleed the Tribune to death.

Alden was paid $23 million; in return, Alden gave the church’s Deseret News 70 percent of the pro?ts from a long-standing JOA with the Tribune, cutting the Tribune to a slender 30 percent. For most of the sixty-one years of joint operation, the Tribune was allocated 58 percent of the pro?ts and the News 42 percent, based on each paper’s circulation. On the JOA ledger sheet of November 2013, the transaction is listed as “(Gain) Loss on sale of Newspaper ($23,000,000).”

The secret 2013 deal made certain that the Tribune—with nearly double the hard copy circulation (about 73,000 daily versus 37,500 at the News) and the more pro?table of the two papers—would starve to death, leaving Utahns with the Mormon Church’s single voice of news and opinion.

The agreement was secret until seven months later when unsigned notes in unmarked envelopes were opened by Tribune reporters Tom Harvey, Robert Gehrke, and columnist Paul Rolly in the City Room of the Tribune:

“Church and John Paton are renegotiating JOA. Tribune will be left with very little. Deal is Tribune for cash.” It was written in a ragged scrawl meant to disguise the handwriting.

The Mormons were ready to sit back and watch their 144-year-old nemesis die from lack of revenue. Furthermore, a clause in the contract allowed the church to veto any prospective purchaser of the paper. The deal appeared to guarantee the demise of the Tribune. Even its publisher said it was in a “death spiral.”

The Mormon Church, with a history of vengeance and a long memory, had been lying in wait for this moment....

The revelation of the deal to cut the Tribune’s revenues brought a roar of dismay from Utah’s dissident Mormons and its non-Mormons, the independents and liberals who represent at least about half the population of Salt Lake City. Says a Mormon Church insider who asked not to be identi?ed, “The church wanted the Tribune dead. They just didn’t want their ?ngerprints on the knife.”

Just as the knife was about to be plunged, it looked as if a small cadre of Davids had brought the giant church Goliath to its knees, and a long-time suitor stepped up to make an offer.

Retribution and revenge are part and parcel of the history of Mormonism, and there is little doubt that the 2013 deal made by the Deseret News was revenge for more than a century of perceived slights.

Edition details

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1633883396
• ISBN 13: 9781633883390
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 311