Deseret News management said Friday ongoing discussions with AT&T, owners of the Salt Lake Tribune, are intended to correct practices that have hurt the Deseret News.
L. Glen Snarr, chairman and president of the News, also reiterated that the Deseret News is not seeking in any way to edit, own or control the voice and content of the Tribune.
"Deseret News negotiations with AT&T, owner of the Salt Lake Tribune, are not to purchase the Tribune but to correct practices by the Tribune-dominated Newspaper Agency Corporation that have been harmful to the Deseret News," said Snarr.
"These practices have hampered growth of the Deseret News, thwarted a move to morning delivery and have proved detrimental in many ways to the News. What we want is a level playing field in operation of the NAC. It is difficult for any company to succeed when it is under the thumb of its competitor. Dominic Welch is not only the publisher of the Tribune but also head of the NAC.
"AT&T owns the Tribune and is joint owner of the Newspaper Agency Corporation with the Deseret News. The NAC handles printing, advertising and distribution of both the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune under a Joint Operating Agreement.
"Tribune control of the NAC has prevented the Deseret News from exercising many of its rights under the JOA. The real issue which appears to have been missed in recent media coverage is not control of the editorial voice of the Tribune; it is ensuring a fair voice in management of the NAC, which presently impairs the ability of the Deseret News to operate effectively in serving its readers and advertisers."
Under the terms of the JOA, the Newspaper Agency Corp. (NAC), which is owned 50-50 by the two newspapers, handles the advertising, printing and circulation of both newspapers. The partnership has been in place since 1952.
Among other things, the talks have centered on the News' desire to go to morning delivery seven days a week — the newspaper currently publishes mornings only on weekends. The contract between the two papers expressly allows seven-day morning publication, said Jim W. Wall, Deseret News publisher.
On Thursday, the Tribune published a front-page story headlined "Tribune Seeks to Keep Paper From D-News."
Broadcast, wire and national newspaper reports this week similarly suggested that the Deseret News was trying to buy and silence the Tribune.
Snarr denied that assertion in a brief statement on the front page of Thursday's Deseret News: "Deseret News Publishing Company is not seeking in any way to edit, own or control the voice and content of the Salt Lake Tribune." The News "supports having two newspapers under separate ownership serving the community. We are not attempting to change that situation," Snarr said.
"All we have ever sought to do is to gain a fair and level playing field. By seeking fairness at the NAC, we are not attempting to use that in any way to gain any editorial control over the Tribune," Wall said.
Tribune publisher and NAC president Welch told the Deseret News Friday that the former owners want to buy back the Tribune but not until 2002. So they want AT&T to take no action until then. He also said he believes the Deseret News has no designs on running both newspapers in the long term but does see the News as wanting to control the NAC.
He said he believed the News' statement Thursday about not wanting to own the Tribune was honest but "didn't go far enough" in not stating its interest in controlling the NAC.
For its part, AT&T will not comment to the news media, even to its own newspaper, the Tribune, on what its intentions may be. It did not return calls to the Deseret News seeking comment.
Up until 1997, the Tribune had been owned and operated by Kearns-Tribune Corp., a closely held company comprised mostly of the heirs of Utah Sen. Thomas Kearns. In 1997, Kearns-Tribune Corp. merged with cable television giant TeleCommunications Inc. (TCI) a company that Kearns-Tribune helped launch in the 1960s. K-T owned 7 percent of TCI's voting shares.
John Malone, TCI's president, made Kearns-Tribune shareholders an offer they couldn't refuse: $751 million shares of non-voting TCI stock for its voting shares. The sale also included four other small newspapers owned by K-T outside Utah.
This was a sweet deal for the Kearns-Tribune shareholders and even some long-term reporters and editors who owned K-T shares through their company retirement plan, making them millionaires overnight, a status rarely enjoyed by journalists who are not named Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather or Peter Jennings.
However, several of the K-T shareholders felt bad about selling off the family business and insisted that the sales contract with TCI contain language that allowed them to buy the Tribune back in 2002. This was supposed to keep TCI from selling the paper to anyone else.
But last year, TCI sold itself to communications giant AT&T for shares worth $55 billion, and the Tribune became an AT&T subsidiary. AT&T made it clear that it is not in the newspaper business and has no intention of hanging on to the Tribune.
This means that the Tribune will be sold again — for the third time in three years.
Contributing: Steve Fidel