I am sick about the substantial cuts to staff and content at The Salt Lake Tribune. The newspaper’s owner, Paul Huntsman, reportedly said he had to go ahead with the layoffs because he had three kids to put through college.
What about the financial well-being of the 34 people — his former employees — who lost jobs and their families? I don’t know how this could ever be viewed as the right decision. Even more discouraging is that there were other buyers interested in purchasing The Tribune before the Huntsmans’ supposedly philanthropic effort to “save” Utah’s independent voice.
The action to terminate this many people — a third of The Tribune’s staff and so many veteran journalists — is no better than the tactics by the hedge fund that previously owned it. (Tactics that restructured the newspapers’ JOA to give the Trib’s competitor Deseret News a greater share of the profits even though The Tribune still has larger circulation, and sold the printing press in exchange for cash that the hedge fund pocketed).
This is a huge blow for Utah and not at all what I think Jon Huntsman Sr. would have wanted. Make no mistake; the loss of a free press is at our peril.
Kim Horiuchi, Cottonwood Heights