Problem: A deal with a small telephone company that was gobbled up by a large telephone company that resulted in The Salt Lake Tribune being spat out to a series of gymnastics and calisthenics with lawyers, Dean Singleton, New York hedge funds and the Mormon church.
Solution: Paul Huntsman.
Problem: The Joint Operating Agreement.
Solution: It’s been negotiated and renegotiated. Re-renegotiate it again and again, this time to the curb, and buy your own press, handle your own ads and delivery. It can’t possibly cost as much as the loss of The Tribune will cost to a community that needs an independent voice.
Problem: Competition from multiple media sources blaring headlines at us 24/7.
Solution: Go with the flow on that one, but increase your internet subscription rate considerably. At least to half the cost of a print edition. It’s only fair — and will increase revenue.
Problem: An aging readership with Generation Xers and millennials who are completely absorbed in their own lives, only get Facebook and Twitter, and don’t realize that it’s not just news headlines, but the investigative reporting, editorial stance, columns and opinion section of a newspaper that make an educated populace.
Solution: Today, I’m arranging two three-month gift subscriptions to two millennials who should be reading The Tribune with the hope that they will continue. Hopefully, other subscribers will do the same for a couple of millennials close to them.
In my life, be it a childhood home, dorm at the U. of U., apartments with roomies, and finally a house with a family of my own, I have never lived without The Salt Lake Tribune landing on the porch, driveway or shrubbery every morning. A free press is essential to a free nation, and without a newspaper, we won’t have either.
Darlene Alley, Bountiful