The management company that currently produces the Salt Lake Tribune has accused the Deseret News, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and William Dean Singleton, chief executive officer of the MediaNews Group, of misrepresenting the pending sale of the Tribune to MediaNews.
Despite strong public denials by these parties, the Tribune's management company, Salt Lake Tribune Publishing (SLTPC), on the eve of going to court to try to stop owners AT&T from selling the paper, has launched a media blitz to propagate the thesis that Singleton is fronting for the church and the church-owned newspaper, the Deseret News, in a conspiracy to gain control of the Tribune. In a Sunday column in the Tribune, editor James E. Shelledy wrote: "Do I know (such premise) to be true in principle? Yes. Can I prove every detail? No."
The strategy is clear: to sue AT&T and attack the LDS Church.
The Deseret News is not directly involved in the Tribune management company's suit against AT&T, but it has a significant and proper interest in it. Whoever owns the Tribune will own 50 percent of the Newspaper Agency Corp. (NAC). The Deseret News owns the other 50 percent. While the News and Tribune have separate, independent and competitive editorial operations, the NAC controls advertising, circulation and production of both newspapers under a Joint Operating Agreement (JOA), which functions under the Newspaper Preservation Act. The JOA provides that the NAC should work to achieve "substantial equality of circulation for the two newspapers." Under the NAC, the circulation of the News has dropped from about equal to about half that of the Tribune.
Had the Deseret News wished to acquire the Tribune it may have done so. It was recently invited by the Tribune's owner, AT&T, to bid for the paper when AT&T decided to sell it. The Deseret News declined to bid. That left two entities invited by AT&T to bid for the Tribune — the management company made up of family members and officers who formerly owned and sold the Tribune, and Singleton's MediaNews Group, which owns 48 daily newspapers in the United States. His newspapers have won five Pulitzer prizes for journalistic excellence, most recently one last year.
The Tribune management company asserts that the Tribune is a family heirloom of the Kearns-McCarthey family and that family members and partners who formerly owned it have the right to buy it. The Deseret News was advised that the family sold the heirloom in 1997, reaping the benefit of many millions of untaxed dollars. Now they want to buy it back under circumstances that may bring into question the earlier transaction.
The management company also asserts that the sale to MediaNews would somehow threaten the independence of the Tribune, maybe even silence its voice. Singleton has pledged the survival of that independent voice.
In fact, it is the voice of the Deseret News that has been under threat by the actions of the Tribune's management company. Through its operational control of the NAC, the Tribune management company has obstructed and delayed the transition of the Deseret News from afternoon to morning publication. In a field in which afternoon newspapers are becoming extinct, that could ultimately mean the death of the Deseret News.
The Tribune's publisher, Dominic Welch, told a meeting of the Deseret News board that ultimately there would be one newspaper in Salt Lake City and it would not be the Deseret News. By contrast, the Deseret News management has consistently reasoned that the community is best served by the continuation of two separate newspaper voices in Salt Lake City. When TeleCommunications Inc.(TCI) acquired the Tribune in 1997 and offered to sell it to the Deseret News, the News management's position was that even if it acquired a larger management position in the NAC, it would preserve the separate editorial voice of the Tribune through an independent trust, an independent owner or some similar arrangement.
The News has become increasingly concerned in recent years over the domination of the equal-partnership NAC by the Tribune. The Tribune's publisher is the NAC's president and assumed the authority of the previous general manager. The News has raised concerns about the impeding of its growth, as well as the NAC's business performance at a time when the economy of Utah and the nation is growing, and profits of other newspaper companies have generally been on the rise.
When the Tribune decided to sell the paper to TCI in 1997, the News raised these concerns with TCI, and again with AT&T when TCI was acquired by AT&T. Both TCI and AT&T indicated they wanted to sell the Tribune because it was not a "strategic asset" for them. The News made clear the conditions it wanted any new partner in the NAC to fulfill. It placed special emphasis on the fairness a new partner must display in establishing a level playing field for the News in operational matters, including conversion to morning publication.
AT&T urged the News and the Tribune's present management company to come to an accord on these conditions. In lengthy negotiations, the Tribune management company was unwilling to accept terms the News considered reasonable. At Singleton's request, the News provided him with the conditions it would request a new owner to fulfill.
With Singleton indicating agreement to those conditions, and the present Tribune management company flatly rejecting them, the News supported Singleton's MediaNews group as the buyer that would assure the survival of the Deseret News as well as the Salt Lake Tribune. Apparently, MediaNews' bid was significantly higher than the Tribune management company's.