Salt Lake City's two daily newspapers are scrambling to stay vital in an information environment torn apart by epoch-making technological transformation and economic upheaval.
From working with leaner staffs and tighter budgets, rolling out niche products and searching for ways to make their Web sites profitable, The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News are moving heaven and Earth to reverse advertising losses that have driven some newspapers out of business and bankrupted others.
At the same time, newspapers are engulfed by another danger. Online and digital ways of receiving information are proliferating and challenging the traditional prominence of newspapers.
"I personally think there's not been much like this since maybe the Industrial Revolution," Salt Lake Tribune editor Nancy Conway said. "In 20 or 30 years, we are going to look back at this time and say, 'My goodness, what a change was occurring.' "
The upshot is ominous. Print readership of The Tribune is declining and growing only slowly at the News . Just 26 percent of adults in Salt Lake City read the print version of The Tribune daily, according to Scarborough Research, a market research firm. The Deseret News figure is 18 percent.
The new landscape is forcing painful change on conventional media that once raked in profits but now are struggling to hang on while they try to reinvent themselves, even as advertising revenue has fallen off.
Perhaps one telling example is the growing role MediaOne of Utah plays for both papers, which co-own the company and split its profits, with The Tribune as the larger entity receiving 58 percent and the News receiving 42 percent.
MediaOne handles advertising, printing and circulation duties for the two papers, and also prints and distributes regional editions of USA Today, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, in addition to producing publications such as Utah CEO magazine and sponsoring events such as the annual Governor's Economic Summit. Almost 30 percent of MediaOne revenue comes from sources outside both Salt Lake City papers.
The upheaval roiling Salt Lake City's media is widespread -- and in at least one case sparked a rebellion. Last month, 10 News reporters removed their names from stories they had written for the Feb. 23 paper to protest Editor Joe Cannon's strategy to make the LDS Church-owned paper more pleasing to Mormons -- and more profitable. Cannon sees the strategy as a way to allow two daily papers to remain viable in a market of Salt Lake City's size.
The reporters were also protesting the demotion of two editors who objected to the paper's drift.
In early 2008, more than a year after Cannon assumed the paper's top job, the News launched Mormon Times , a section that supplies news and information about the church and its members. A few weeks later, the paper unveiled mormontimes.com, aimed at Mormons worldwide. Perhaps not coincidentally, the News at the time was considering several cost-cutting actions.
In July, Cannon eliminated 34 newsroom jobs, closed the paper's Washington, D.C., bureau and ordered several other measures to bring revenues and expenses closer together.
Joel Campbell, a Brigham Young University journalism professor and Mormon Times columnist, said the News' redoubled focus on LDS readers to boost circulation and draw advertisers is justified. Research going back a decade shows little interest in the newspaper among non-Mormons. Still, he worries LDS readers may get a religiously slanted view of the news, despite Cannon's promise that the paper will be even-handed.
Cannon's strategy appears to be working. Paid circulation increased 2.1 percent in the six months ending Sept. 30. The News was one of a few big-city papers to add readers during the period, according to Audit Bureau of Circulations figures.
The larger Salt Lake Tribune is coping with circulation and advertising declines of its own. Paid readership dropped 5 percent in the six-month period, according to ABC. So far this year, revenue for both papers is down 20 percent.
Although the circulation losses are blamed on a cost-saving move to pull Tribunes from numerous hotels in Utah, editors see them as additional confirmation that the newspaper must branch into new areas if it is to keep its leading role.
Three years ago, The Tribune began to beef up its Web site with more breaking local news. The site also provides video from The Associated Press, links to reporter blogs and a link to a mostly free online classified ad site. It's also a doorway to an electronic edition of The Tribune for subscribers who want an exact replica of the print version.
The Tribune also has launched UtahsRight.com, an online database of crime statistics, public employees salaries and other information. A "bulldog" edition of the Sunday paper gives readers store coupons, classifieds and other ads on Saturday. Ahora Utah , a Spanish-language print weekly, taps the state's burgeoning Latino numbers. In This Week is a print and online entertainment tabloid that borders on the risqué.
Not everything has worked. Buzz, a free afternoon news tabloid distributed to commuters in downtown Salt Lake City, was mothballed after several months of publication because advertising support could not be sustained .
To cut costs, The Tribune has shrunk the dimensions of the paper and is using thinner newsprint. Space for news has been reduced, stock listings have been pared back and the editorial Op-ed page on Monday is gone.
Readers have noticed, and some are critical of the changes.
The paper "is an abbreviated form of its usual self. It used to take me hours to read, and I'm a religious reader of The Tribune ," said Mike Dunn, a Salt Lake-based Delta Air Lines pilot.
"I just hate to see it become a kind of USA Today of Salt Lake City, where you get abbreviated stories, no in-depth coverage. It's frustrating. I understand why it's smaller, but I'd like to see it return to its former glory," Dunn said.
Top editor Conway said newspapers still have a future, but how they will adapt to pressures brought on by the Internet and plummeting revenue is evolving.
"I don't think there is a magic formula. If there is, nobody is singing about it right now. I think one of the difficult parts of where we are is no one knows for sure where we are going."
As dire as the environment seems, it's hard to find a news executive who believes newspapers don't have a future.
The model of relying solely on print products to communicate information to consumers may be endangered, but 40 percent of Americans still read a print or online paper every day.
"It isn't so much that we need to save print [newspapers] or a particular product, but we need to save the journalism," Conway said.
"People get news through many different vehicles and we need to give it to them that way. We need to give it to them through text messaging, through news alert and print, online and niche products, all of which we are doing. I think we will see more and more of that happening," Conway said.
