When I meet with people who care about The Salt Lake Tribune, they ask me how we’re doing.
And then they brace themselves for bad news. This is understandable. More than a quarter of newspapers have disappeared in the past 15 years. Today, half are owned by financial institutions that routinely lay off journalists, sell assets and raise prices in an effort to maximize profits.
Until Paul Huntsman bought The Tribune in 2016, we were owned by a hedge fund named Alden Global Capital. Over the past five years, we have become the only major metro newspaper to transition to a nonprofit, we have left a joint operating agreement and moved from printing seven days a week to one (more on that below).
We are healthy. We are sustainable in 2021, and we have no plans to return to a previously precarious position.
The Tribune newsroom is 23% larger than it was a year ago. We’ve welcomed a three-member Innovation Lab reporting team, a west Salt Lake Valley reporter and a second southern Utah reporter. We’ve also added to our digital team and our editing ranks. We’ve invested in long-overdue cameras and lenses for photographers, and provided a 401(k) match and parental leave for our employees.
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