This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

[Video: A bit of 1952's "Deadline USA." With Humphrey Bogart as a crusty newspaper editor.]

Laura Nelson really knows how to hurt a guy. At least I'm sure she thinks she does.

In a column published on the Op-Ed page of Friday's Salt Lake Tribune, the executive director of the Governor's Office of Energy Development quite reasonably noted the pot-calling-the-kettle aspect of the Tribune editorial published that previous Tuesday.

That was the one that worried that the state of Utah in general, and Nelson's office in particular, was placing far too much hope in the extraction, transport and refining of stuff that's known in the trade as "waxy crude" and found in some abundance in Utah's Uinta Basin.

That's a kind of petroleum that has, we are told, much potential for making gasoline, other fuels and various plastics and petrochemicals.

If, that is, a cost-effective way could be found to ship the stuff — a congealed goo at anything below 105 degrees — to market.

Our concerns include the fact that this fossil fuel, even more than most, is expensive to exploit, both in terms of cash and potential impact on the environment. And that any fiscal or social investment in that particular resource is risky given the inevitable booms and busts in any commodities market.

Nelson's reply was a long paean to the wonders of oil and how much we still need it, with nary a syllable devoted to environmental or sustainability concerns.

It also included the following;

"There is a certain irony that a business struggling in decline is expounding on how to manage the growth of a critical resource that helps to enable our state's economic well being."

Ouch! But, fair enough.

The whole industry that includes the Tribune is indeed struggling. Revenues and circulation are way down and not likely to ever reclaim their pre-internet glory.

Just Wednesday, about seven minutes before the rest of the world found out, the staff of the Tribune was told that this newspaper is being sold. Again. This time by Digital First Media to an investment arm of Salt Lake City's Huntsman family headed by Paul Huntsman.

And there was much rejoicing.

This was the latest event in an industry that has seen so many closings, sales, mergers, spin-offs, lay-offs, buy-outs and shifts to online-oriented, or online-only, approaches to news.

None of which has really cracked the nut of how to make enough money selling news to pay for the gathering and distribution of news.

But we know the fix we're in. We know that the way most people have chosen to receive most of their real news, as well as a lot of fluff, is shifting from print to, well, something else.

Something with a screen and probably without any wires. Something that we and a lot of other people are still struggling to, as we all now say, monetize.

We've known for a long time that we have to stop thinking of ourselves as being in the newspaper business and start thinking of ourselves as being in the information business. The understanding business. The wisdom business.

What we don't see from Nelson's office — even though it is formally styled the Office of Energy Development — is the realization that for Utah to survive economically and environmentally it has to stop thinking of itself as being in the oil business and start seeing itself as being in the energy business. The solar business. The wind business.

Yes, it will be a long time — maybe never — before we don't need fossil fuels at all. Just as it will be awhile — your guess is as good as mine — before there is no longer any demand for news on print. (Which still pays the bills around here.)

If we were as devoted to paper as Nelson's office is to oil, we'd be in even worse shape than we are.

In a race to 21st century sustainability, fossil newspapers vs. fossil fuels, I like our chances. Because, while we're clearly in trouble, we're not so deep in denial.

George Pyle, a Tribune editorial writer, has lost count of the new technologies that were going to save the news business. gpyle@sltrib.com