Salt Lake City to Lose Its Two Daily Print Newspapers

The website will relaunch in the coming days, the newspaper said, and some journalists in the 65-person newsroom will be redeployed in unspecified roles.

The Deseret News told its staff at a meeting on Monday that 18 employees, most of whom were in the newspaper’s visual editing and sales departments, were being laid off, according to the newspaper.

Its president and publisher, Jeff Simpson, said in the op-ed article that the paper was “in a unique position because for years now our digital readership has dwarfed our print readership.”

The number of digital users on its site is 500 times that of its local print subscribers, Mr. Wilks wrote.

Over the last decade, newspapers across the country, big and small, have had to change their business models and structures to stay profitable — or simply survive — as revenues from advertisers have collapsed. In 2019, Paul Huntsman, owner of The Tribune, sought federal approval to turn the newsroom into a nonprofit operation, which he said would give it the best chance of survival.

Later that year, The Tribune became the first metropolitan daily to become a nonprofit organization. It takes in revenue from ads, reader subscriptions and philanthropic donations.

The Tribune said its weekly edition would showcase the newspaper’s best enterprise work and in-depth stories. It would also carry articles from The New York Times, The Associated Press and other news outlets.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/27/business/media/salt-lake-tribune-daily-delivery.html