Some communities, like Salt Lake City, are fortunate enough to have several of these families, who support universities, museums, performance artists and fine artists, opera, symphony, as well as medical treatment and research facilities and services for the homeless and the hungry.
The Huntsman family is one of those philanthropic giants in Salt Lake City. It's also a family that has built a financial juggernaut founded on the chemical industry.
Two weeks ago, a package of stories in The Salt Lake Tribune examined what it described as the Huntsman "paradox." The articles explored claims that one of the family's chemical plants created environmental conditions in Texas that were making people sick. The articles also detailed the good the family had done in the Salt Lake community, in particular how Jon Huntsman had poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the fight against cancer.
The reaction from the family was outrage.
The Huntsmans paid for two full-page advertisements, signed by Peter R. Huntsman (one of Jon Huntsman's sons), in less than a week. The ads said that The Tribune misled the family and Huntsman executives when it approached them for interviews. The ads questioned The Tribune's motives in reporting and running the pieces, accusing the newspaper of ignoring facts and using "half-truths and innuendo to present a slanted, biased and unfair view of the Huntsman family and the Huntsman companies." It also said, "The Tribune will stop at nothing to prevent facts from getting in the way of its biases."
When I read the stories on Sunday, Aug. 8, I thought they were balanced. One of our readers sent an e-mail that pointed out how fair he thought the main story was:
"To clear things up for myself, I made some measurements that you might find interesting:
"Number of inches of print that said something positive about Jon Huntsman and his family business: 27.5
"Number of inches that said something negative: 28.5
"Number of inches that were neutral: 6
"Total number of photos/graphics that were positive: 5 (71 square inches)
"Total number of photos/graphics that were negative: 5 (52 square inches)
"Total number of photos/graphics that were neutral: 3
"Looks pretty 'fair and balanced' to me. In this age of sound bites and attack-dog politics, the article struck me as remarkably well-researched and compassionate."
Tribune Executive Editor Tom Baden asked News Editor Tom Harvey to check into the factual errors alleged in Huntsman's advertisement. Harvey reported back that the facts in The Tribune article were correct. The only correction run on the piece was one on Aug. 13 that corrected the information on a caption for a photograph.
Baden said The Tribune stands behind the Huntsman package, which took several months to plan, report, and write and illustrate. "The majority of the readers of a newspaper that reports honestly and fairly on a situation will respect the coverage," he said.
Thrifties were missed: One day I am going to have a giant sign made that reads: "Newspaper readers are creatures of habit."
And I will make everyone who has anything to do with this newspaper read it.
Last week the Newspaper Agency Corporation (which sells the ads, prints and delivers both The Tribune and the Deseret Morning News) did away with the "Thrifties" section of the classified ads in which people could advertise things they wanted to sell that were less than $400.
It did not take long for the NAC to find out how popular the ads were.
Thrifties returned at the end of this week.
Apparently, real bargain hounds went first to the "Thrifties" section of the classifieds to see if what they wanted was available at a great price. They were not willing to read through all the ads under a certain classification like "Dogs for sale" to find something in their price range.
9 Number of readers who think the type size is too small.
51 Number of readers unhappy when "Thrifty" classified ads disappeared.
8 Number of readers who think Olympic coverage is "just right."
6 Number of online readers unhappy with the speed of the site loading.
