Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall issued a proclamation designating Wednesday, Sept. 24, as “Deseret News — Voice of the West Day in Salt Lake City," following its 175th birthday in June.
The proclamation recognizes the Deseret News for being “the Mountain West’s first newspaper and... the longest-running news organization in Utah, as well as the state’s oldest continuously operating business.” It also mentions that the Deseret News is just one of 47 newspapers in the United States to achieve this milestone.
Mendenhall’s announcement references Deseret News reporter Bob Mullins’s Pulitzer Prize, won in 1962. Mullins was able to gather and publish information the FBI wasn’t even able to get in the case of a murder and kidnapping at Dead Horse Point in July 1961.
The proclamation also mentions the upheaval experienced by the news business in recent years, saying, “the digital age reshaped journalism, with one-third of U.S. newspapers closing since 2005, yet the Deseret News adapted while staying true to its mission to ‘elevate understanding, challenge assumptions and illuminate context from our long-standing heritage of faith, family, and the fundamental values that build strong societies.’”
Deseret News editor Sarah Jane Weaver expressed gratitude for the mayor’s proclamation.
“We’re so grateful that Mayor Mendenhall and Salt Lake City would recognize Deseret News’ work and legacy,” Weaver said. “After 175 years, we’re still happy to call Salt Lake City Deseret News’ home.”
The Deseret News serves “as a window for the nation to see all the good that is happening in Utah and a window out for Utahns to contextualize and understand national news that has relevance in the intermountain west,” Weaver said.
Early settlers in the Salt Lake Valley hauled a second-hand, 4,000-pound Ramage hand-press from Philadelphia to start the paper and connect new Utahns with the rest of the nation, Weaver explained.
The Deseret News advanced “from typesetters to typewriters, word processors to satellites, and darkrooms to digital cameras,” the proclamation states.
The proclamation comes ahead of an upcoming documentary about the history of the Deseret News, set to air on Saturday, October 4 at 4 p.m., following the afternoon session of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s semi-annual General Conference.