DesNews Expanding Beyond Mormons

desnewsIt’s no secret that in the ever increasingly unstable newspaper market that the Deseret New has been trying to increase it’s market beyond both Utah and even the Mormon audience. It’s always been a bit odd being a metro paper in competition with the Salt Lake Tribune in a tiny market but also publishing the Church News. I remember as a kid my parents having a subscription to the Church News in way off Halifax, Nova Scotia. With the loss of classified dollars and the shift to the internet with low ad rates, all newspapers have been struggling. In a small market with two competing papers (plus the Provo Herald and Ogden Standard Examiner) it’s hard to stay in business.

As we reported last month the Salt Lake Tribune, itself reportedly in dire financial straits, was bought by the Huntsman family. Presumably to help keep competition in news and as a bit of a charity project. While the Deseret News has the backing of the Church and its media corporations (including KSL TV and radio) it too has long been under financial stress. After various strategies and leadership, a few years ago they launched a national online edition and has been now going to be writing for the Deseret News. (HT: McKay Coppins) Of course the Blaze was itself a project of Mormon Glenn Beck. So this isn’t quite as big of a jump as it might seem. Also there have been a lot of reports that the Blaze itself has been struggling financially with many people jumping ship.

I am curious as to your thoughts on this. I’ll confess I don’t regularly read the Deseret News. I tend to just read the local stories that pop up in my Twitter feed. However I do find the evolution of media in Utah as it relates to the Church fascinating. Broadening the market to include all conservative religious readers is in one way brilliant but in an other way pretty hard to pull off given continued distrust of Mormons by evangelics.

11 comments for “DesNews Expanding Beyond Mormons

  1. There are a lot of typos in this article, but this sentence, which seems to be the crux of the piece, is completely incoherent:

    “After various strategies and leadership, a few years ago they launched a national online edition and has been now going to be writing for the Deseret News.”

  2. Clark. This may be slightly off, but I remember decades ago seeing a reprint of a fascinating book. Its called “Early Utah Journalism: Half a Century of Forensic Warfare, Waged by the West’s Most Militant Press” . It was published by the Utah Historical Society in 1938 [wondering if this was one of those historical products funded by New Deal legislation] and reprinted by Greenwood Press in 1970 [that must have been the edition I saw]. I recall reading a few pages and realizing that the DN/ST wars I knew of in the 70s and 80s were nothing compared to the old days.

  3. Dear Clark,

    You are a brilliant person and have wonderful ideas. However, when you write sentences that are floridly incoherent, it shows that you wrote our blog post in haste, did not consider the post important enough to re-read, and evidently thought that many other things in your life were of more value than this blog. If the process of writing your thoughts is so cursory, then readers like me also begin to doubt the extent to which you reflect before you write. This undermines your general credibility, as well as T&S. It also diminishes the quality of thought and reflection present in blog conversations when the author of the blog post – the person guiding the conversation – isn’t really thinking about what they’re doing. What’s more, it’s a bit insulting to your readers to present marginal work for their consumption. Your readers deserve better.

    Sorry to be a downer. Happy weekend.

  4. Well that’s more than a little harsh. Reminds me of the academic decathalon from Happy Gilmore:

    “Mr. Madison, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.”

  5. While I only read either the Tribune or the Deseret News online (and then only when alerted by a news aggregator using my selected keywords), I have long (15+ years) been of the opinion that the DN is highly biased and too much affected by its owners’ agenda.

    On the other hand, the Tribune has a tendency to take a somewhat LDS-adversarial role, and I am being generous in my opinion.

  6. On the third hand, it is refreshing to finally see a post about something other than “Reading Nephi.”

  7. I can but give my profuse apologies. I’d written it and hadn’t realized I’d published it publicly. You’re completely correct there’s no excuse. I got pulled away and have been busy with one thing after an other ever since. I’ll be more careful only to post when I have a block of time to do a good job. Unfortunately that’ll result in many delays as I’m quite busy.

  8. This is a blog. The contributors have busy lives. The content of the posts is far more important to me than the form. I appreciate the insights and ideas offered, and I would prefer to have more ideas to reflect on than fewer. If more time spent editing results in fewer submissions, that is a negative result. Thank you for your contributions, Clark.

  9. As a comment writer who is only incoherent and has not entered the hothouse levels of floridly incoherent, I would just add to “Your readers deserve better” well, maybe some do, but those that complain most certainly do not.

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