Among the impressive collection of articles published in 2024 by the Deseret News are hundreds of stories that offered in-depth narratives and perspective to our audience. Today, looking back on 2024, the Deseret News shares 20 of our favorites, in random order, that address politics, personalities and important issues.
The dogs who bring the fallen home
More than 600,000 people go missing in the United States each year, according to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons database, funded by the U.S. Department of Justice. Often, officials know what happened to them or they can figure it out. But people also get lost in nature, get sucked away in hurricanes to be buried in debris, die in wildfires or suffer debilitating accidents. Some just wander off or take their own lives. Others are victims of crime or perpetrators who disappear trying to elude justice. The vast majority of the missing are found, some alive, some dead. There are also about 4,400 unidentified bodies recovered in the U.S. each year.
Such stories have layers of tragedy. And sometimes, solving the where and why of how someone disappeared requires extra help. So cadaver dogs like Booze, Rhum and Coke, trained to seek the dead, join the search for answers.
Can this rural community be a solution for America’s loneliness problem?
Arriving at the Nubanusit neighborhood is to step into a secluded haven hidden within the woods of rural New Hampshire. Today, 29 households make up this cohousing community, a modern “co-living” model where residents own their homes and work regular jobs, but share and collectively care for the common spaces. Can this be your future?
From ‘The Benedict Option’ to “living in Wonder,’ Rod Dreher is looking for meaning
In the space of a decade, Rod Dreher’s life - and relationships with his family - unraveled devastatingly. In 2011, he’d moved back to his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana, with his wife and three children after his sister died of cancer. But instead of a warm welcome, he was met with rejection from his family. “They saw the fact that I had moved away as an unforgivable sin,” Dreher told me recently over Zoom, speaking from Budapest where he now lives.
A guide to sleep from A to Zzzs: Daylight saving time and the sleep disruptions that follow
If you struggle with sleep — falling asleep, staying asleep, feeling refreshed when you awaken — you’re like an estimated 1 in 3 American adults who don’t get enough. As many as 84 million U.S. adults don’t sleep well and up to 70 million have sleep disorders. Their sleep problems may also plague those around them. Americans rack up $90 billion a year in related health care costs, per a Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine study. And in 2022, Gallup found the economy suffered to the annual tune of $44.6 billion for sleep-related lost productivity. No one’s really guessing how much money we spend on products to boost our odds of getting Zzzzs.
A comprehensive look at what’s at stake for downtown Salt Lake City
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does not have a financial stake in the Smith Entertainment Group’s proposal for a sports, entertainment, culture and convention district in downtown Salt Lake City. But the church does have “a shared interest with other stakeholders in the community” and in having “a vibrant downtown.”
“We will be neighbors. We are neighbors today. The entertainment district that they’ve talked about runs parallel to Temple Square and so of course we have an interest in what happens there. But we think it’s an exciting proposition and there’s a lot of interest in what they’re doing,” Bishop L. Todd Budge, second counselor in the church’s Presiding Bishopric, told the Deseret News in an interview.
‘What the heck just happened?’: What Kenneth Rooks had to say following his silver medal run
Against all odds, Kenneth Rooks, who burst onto the track scene seemingly out of nowhere only one year ago, won the silver medal in the 3,000-meter steeplechase Aug. 7 in Paris. After running at the back of the pack for much of the race, Rooks took the lead with less than a lap to go and didn’t give it up until the final 80 meters, when defending Olympic champion Soufiane El Bakkali edged ahead of him en route to another Olympic victory. “It was awesome,” Rooks told the Deseret News. “After the race, I was like, what the heck just happened?”
Opinion: Trump shooting was an assault on all Americans
The gunshots that rang through a political rally and injured former President Donald Trump on Saturday, July 13, were, in truth, aimed at all Americans.
No matter how passionate people may feel about politics and candidates, violence directed at one participant in the nation’s democratic process is an assault on all Americans, regardless of ideology. The integrity of that process ensures that laws and the will of the people reign supreme in a nation that has long been the envy of the world.
Harvard Divinity School is drawing Latter-day Saints in record numbers. Why?
On a recent September afternoon, inside a vaulted-ceiling chapel at Harvard Divinity School, a group of professors and students joined together in an unusual sing-along. They belted out: “Popcorn popping on the apricot tree” and motioned explosions with their hands. Some attendees exchanged glances of amusement and confusion, but to one group in the room, the song and the hand movements were second nature. We went to Harvard to talk to Latter-day Saints at the Divinity School.
Farmers help a small town thrive with a big assist from a river
Mark Twain once said, “When one has tasted watermelon, he knows what angels eat.” If so, the angels would love the melons produced in the rural Utah town of Green River. Watermelon farmers in the area are meticulous in the care of their crops, like bakers who are driven to add just the right amount of flour, baking powder and baking soda, and not a smidgen more.
RFK Jr.’s big gamble
Stepping into Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s home office is like stepping into another world. The rest of the home — nestled above west Los Angeles, where Kennedy lives with his wife, actress Cheryl Hines — is tastefully decorated in muted hues and original artwork. But Kennedy’s office, attached to the exterior garage, is much more chaotic. Books line the walls and cover nearly every surface. Taxidermied animals rest on the mantel and shelves. There are various markers from his career as a conservationist and environmental lawyer: a basketball-sized pufferfish, a perched hawk, and, most prominent, a massive Sumatran tiger — a gift from the Indonesian government to Kennedy’s father, the late attorney general and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
That the younger Kennedy would launch his own run for president, following in the footsteps of both his father and his uncle, isn’t entirely surprising.
Amid the haters, the Trumpers and a virulent form of cancer, Nancy French just wants to make art
Nancy French opens her front door, wearing a denim skirt and tall brown boots, looking like she’s ready for a cover shoot for some trendy Western magazine. The wig, you must know, is fabulous. Shoulder length and glossy, not so different from her natural dark hair; the wig becomes her, but at great cost. Since her husband, the New York Times columnist David French, accidentally revealed on a Zoom call that his wife was in treatment for cancer, French has chosen to be public about her diagnosis, which she’d originally planned to keep private. It turned out to be for the best.
Looking for Tucker Carlson in the backwoods of Maine
Since Tucker Carlson and Fox curtly “parted ways” in April 2023 and Carlson later launched an eponymous network, he has edged into even more controversial territory than he did at Fox — and there was plenty of controversy at Fox. His fiercest critics these days see him as a dangerous demagogue who shares responsibility, along with Donald Trump, for the bitter polarization that divides America today. Carlson, one person who used to work with him, wrote, “made it fun to hate.” He wasn’t wrong. And this is why, on a warm June afternoon, as a thunderstorm threatened, I found myself wandering the backwoods of Woodstock, Maine, in search of Tucker Carlson.
Beyond DEI: Unpacking Utah’s debate over campus diversity initiatives
Diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, refers to policies meant to “level the playing field” in colleges, schools or the workplace with a focus on groups that have faced historic discrimination. It can take the form of diversity statements in hiring, employee trainings, and programs intended for particular ethnicities or identity groups. But for MJ Powell, a Salt Lake native who came to the University of Utah as a first-generation college student on a diversity scholarship awarded through the university’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Division, the nuance is lost when DEI efforts are reduced to an acronym.
The surprising trajectory that made FOX’s Laura Ingraham a conservative superstar
At 61, Laura Ingraham is one of the longest-reigning media stars of conservative media, a woman who can get almost anyone on the phone that she likes, regardless of the era of the GOP they were in — from Pat Buchanan and Newt Gingrich, to Clarence Thomas to President-elect Donald Trump. In the first interview since Trump’s election victory, she discusses the future of media and the Republican Party.
What does a modern arranged marriage look like?
Pratibha Poonia’s online marriage profile didn’t mention any hobbies, likes or dislikes, nor did it include any one-line zingers or hints about her personality. In fact, the information was as straightforward as it could be: 26 years old, 5 feet 5 inches, education history — including her bachelor’s and master’s degrees — and facts about her parents and her unmarried brother. She had agreed to set up the profile, albeit begrudgingly, she told me over the phone in January, when I was visiting India. Pratibha, my cousin, confessed she didn’t feel entirely ready at first but after some nagging and pestering from her family, she warmed up to the idea. Her uncle, my father, Raj Poonia, undertook the responsibility of finding the perfect match for her.
The nun at the border
“Dad is in America,” Kenia Veronica Merari told her boys, over and over, as they walked. It was the only way to keep them moving. Two years and five months had passed since their father left Honduras to find work in Pennsylvania, leaving Kenia behind with their two sons, ages 7 and 5. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. “But the separation made me want to come,” Kenia told me. Eventually, she threw spare clothes into backpacks and told her sons they’d be heading to the United States. They took a series of buses through Guatemala, buffered by miles of walking between. It took them weeks to get through Mexico, a nearly 2,000-mile trek across jungles and deserts. When they reached a port of entry at Nogales, she turned herself in and petitioned for asylum.
Standoff at Eagle Pass
At the end of Main Street, at the river’s edge, lies a dusty baseball diamond that looks like any other you might find in America’s heartland. That is, if you ignore the troops. Jutting out into the dividing line between the United States and Mexico, Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, Texas, has become the epicenter of the country’s immigration crisis, its grass pressed flat under the feet of countless thousands of migrants emerging from the Rio Grande during the surge in border crossings in 2023.
Finding John Stockton
“I had to be famous for a reason,” John Stockton tells me, hanging on the last word. The phrase comes out more as a confession than a declaration, as if Stockton, himself, were grappling with just what to make of his basketball career. Those ballplaying days are now two decades in the past — a prestigious chapter, but a prelude nonetheless. Now, the man heralded as one of basketball’s greatest point guards ever wants to be known for something else. “It’s a double-edged sword, fame is,” Stockton tells me, sitting on the old Delta Center wood court, now installed in a facility near Stockton’s home in Spokane, Washington. “There’s something I’m not —”
Mitt Romney on the purpose of life: The exit interview
One Sunday in late 2007, Mitt Romney showed up to a Sunday morning meeting at the Latter-day Saint chapel in Nashua, New Hampshire. He came in a few minutes late and sat on his own toward the back, a slight smile on his face, his eyes focused straight ahead. Romney, sitting there alone in that chapel, without even his wife Ann or another member of his large family to buffer him, showed all of himself at once: he was the nice Midwesterner, the buttoned-up Bostonian, the man with roots deep enough in Utah that years later he was able to win one of the state’s seats in the U.S. Senate after only a few years of residence. A man of faith. When many candidates go to church in the midst of a campaign, it’s often to rally supporters. But Romney was there for something else.
‘The Lord’s timing’: The inside story of how Kevin Young landed at BYU
Earlier this year Kevin Young chose to become the new men’s basketball coach at Brigham Young University. He left his job as the Phoenix Suns associate head coach at the end of team’s NBA playoffs run because he says he knows it’s right for his family and his career. The story of how he landed at BYU needs to be clarified and amplified, including the way his contract has been mischaracterized. But in many ways the journey began in earnest in Bear, Delaware.