It’s no secret that recently joined Des News editor Joe Cannon has been trying to stave off the newspaper recession by making his paper “more local, more online, more Mormon.”
Now comes word that some DN reporters are protesting recent changes by holding a byline strike.
Deseret News government reporters pulled their bylines today in protest of management changes made as the paper transforms itself into a Mormon niche publication.
As this comes from The SL Trib’s Crawler, I suppose the relaying of insider sour grapes should be taken with a grain of salt but you can see an example of the byline strike here. The Crawler also clarifies that this decision is originating from Cannon and not the Church.
Making the paper more Mormon and a niche paper does not sound like great way to expand readership, but rather a sure way to lose it. Is there enough Mormon news to justify a “Mormon” newspaper? Plus, would that be beneficial to the Church? I’m dubious.
But with newspapers dramatically losing readers and money (even the NY Times stock – which was worth over $50 seven years ago – is now worth less than its Sunday edition), perhaps drastic measures are necessary to survive.
(Possibly) Related posts:
Tags: deseret news, journalism, mormon times
-
The News Editor is a coach of sorts isn’t he? Let him coach.
-
The difficulty with Cannon would not so much be that he is too Mormon but that his most recent position, prior to joining the News, was heading the Republican Party in Utah. That said, I do not think he has done a bad job. He is clearly the better Cannon brother.
-
>Is there enough Mormon news to justify a “Mormon” newspaper? Plus, would that be beneficial to the Church? I’m dubious.
Yes, there is, and yes, it would be. It’s called The Church News. Or The Ensign.
But I know you’re not referring to those. In other words, I agree with you: this is a bad idea.
-
To be the contrarian here, this is not a bad idea. In most forms of competitive syndicated media, specialization and differentiation have been the essential tools to survival in the challenged market place. In Magazines, we have seen the death of general all-purpose mags and the move forward of specialty magazines. In Television, we can no longer have a news hour only, or even a specialized news station, but we have to have a republican leaning news station and a democrat leaning station t appeal to those niche markets. So it makes since in a tightly controlled market like Salt Lake that in order to compete with the Tribune, Deseret News would need to differentiate itself, and since Salt Lake is 50% LDS, a good target to go after is the LDS market, especially since word of mouth is already pushing the Tribune as the “not LDS” paper. We’re not talking about making all the articles about mormons. We’re talking about focusing on those stereotupical market interests that Mormons are into.
-
A few points. First, the only visible change here is a new weekly section on Mormon related news. Second, for years now the Salt Lake Tribune has been carrying more Mormon related news in the main body of the paper than the Deseret News.
The new section is a little too PR-ish for my taste, but it is of much greater general interest than the Church News, which doesn’t really carry anything of the sort you wouldn’t find in the Ensign.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that Joe Cannon notwithstanding, the paper as a whole is still visibly left-leaning and has been for decades. If anything it has become more so over the past few years along with much of the rest of the media.
-
Mark D.
Visibly Left-Leaning? Are you defining the left as anything to the left of Ezra Taft Benson?
-
Matt W.–
While I completely agree with your take on the need to differentiate a product, you miss (IMO) one important fact: This differentiation has already taken place.
Everyone in SLC knows–and has know for a long time–that the DN is the “pro-Mormon” paper, and the Trib is the “less pro-Mormon” paper. By becoming decidedly more LDS-oriented, the DN will gain very few supporters, and will likely lose a some on the margin.
All told, I don’t think this will have any visible impact on readership–thus, it’s a bad idea if it brings ANY additional costs, whether it be hiring costs to replace striking writers, new advertising costs, or new paper costs for the extra section.
-
Chris H.
As always, bias is in the eye of the beholder, but I think it’s hard to call the DN “conservative.” I would describe it squishy moderate at best. Just because it doesn’t fall in line with most other clearly left-leaning newspapers doesn’t make it right-leaning.
Overall, I’m agnostic on the move. It doesn’t sound like a logical way to expand sales and readership but the entire industry is tanking so bad right now, perhaps radical experimentation is the way to go. And the DN does have a Mormon base so I guess it makes sense to leverage that as best as possible.
-
Hmmm…okay, defining ideology is always hard, particularly amongst Mormons (where ETB is a conservative, George Bush-both of them-is a left leaning moderate and I am a commie).
Both the DN and the Trib are very Republican, though the Trib does have Rolly and Kirby. The DN is not right-wing on things like immigration, but neither is much of the GOP.
Of course, I love the Washington Post.
I follow the Des News not because I care about Utah but because I am looking for Mormon-Interest stories. So I welcome the change. I have always liked it better than the Trib, which I just do not think is that good. The DN needs to claim a reliable niche if the Salt Lake Valley is going to keep two daily newspapers.
-
All I know is if you read the comment sections of any LDS related story on the SL Trib it will amaze you how anti Mormon or Anti Utah it is. The Trib refuses to control the tone or content of the haters. At least on the DN they try to reduce the Troll comments.
-
Todd,
I think that mostly just shows a problem with the comment format on newspapers. Blogs work when the author interacts and manages the comments. That does not take place on newpapers.
-
The comments function of the Washington Post online actually works pretty well, most of the time. Of course, they actually have a mini-army of moderators on staff to review comments and cull out the offensive ones.
And i’d agree that the DN’s editorial page is left-leaning–but only if compared to the really, really intense right lean of Utah in general. (By my reckoning, Utah’s easily the third most conservative state in the nation.) Compared to most of the country, even before the slight leftward movement of the last three years, the DN’s editorial page has clearly stood right of center.
BTW–in discussing newspapers and whether they’re right-leaning or left-leaning, it’s worth remembering that most major newspapers completely separate their editorial and news staffs. When i lived in Utah–no idea if things have changed since–i always found the SL Trib’s editorial page to be (just barely) left-leaning, but the news coverage slanted right.
-
Chris H.,
The Deseret News is not remotely conservative on political issues. At best it might be considered moderate, where “moderate” is somewhere between the typical positions of Republicans and Democrats.
The editorial policy is typically somewhat left of center (it appears to be written by committee consensus), as is almost all the in-house political commentary. They have one in house political columnist who is moderately right of center (Webb) and he writes together with a moderate left winger (Piganelli). The more recent left wing tilt is not so much due to in house staff, as it is to the inclusion of syndicated “news analysis” pieces from reliably left leaning organizations (the AP, the New York Times, and the like).
13 comments
Comments feed for this article
Trackback link: http://asoftanswer.com/2009/02/24/deseret-news-strike-for-being-too-mormon/trackback/