Comments on: Huntsman Buys Salt Lake Tribune

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 15:13:02 +0000

With many of these sites they don’t simply sell advertising but they sell analytics via Google. The real money (well what there is) comes from learning about you the reader.

By: John Mansfield

John Mansfield — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 14:28:04 +0000

It has been unpleasant to experience the evolution of the Washington Post’s news delivery over the last decade. The newsstand price was 35 cents in 2007. In January 2012, it went up from 75 cents to $1. It’s now $2. I suppose printing costs haven’t gone up six-fold in a decade, and the difference reflects loss of advertising. I used to enjoy picking up a paper in the morning now and then while getting a doughnut, and that behavior changed little as the price doubled and the paper got skinnier, but when the price hit a dollar, it no longer seemed like the same trifling indulgence, and my newspaper purchases plummeted, which seems to be WaPo’s intent; the drastic price hike feels intended to push readers away from print. The internet presentation of the paper used to be modeled somewhat after a print newspaper’s front page: multiple columns, and a hierarchy to the design. Catering to smart phones instead of computer monitor screens or laptops, the home page is now mostly a long, single-column, undifferentiated scroll. Browsing the news on the site now feels like it’s mediated by a fence with a hole I can peek through at random things. And that’s the experience with what had been one of the nation’s leading papers, now owned by a web-born billionaire.

By: Art

Art — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 05:46:51 +0000

Reputable news outlets have power. Power to not only sway opinions, power to set the agenda about what the people will have opinions on, and perhaps most importantly, as a direct result of those reasons the ownership creates an ability to access political individuals.

For individuals with a lot of money, power is more important.

I’m not saying it’s nefarious, because the power will be yielded for good or bad. If I’m a wealthy person concerned with the state of the world, or concerned about trying to shape the world how I’d prefer it, news media acquisitions make sense.

By: Jim Cobabe

Jim Cobabe — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 23:55:57 +0000

Will be most interesting to watch what happens now. Hoping for good things!

By: Jim Averly

Jim Averly — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 22:34:23 +0000

I’m glad the Tribune will live on…for now. If they could just do something about the comment sections though…complete cess pool.

By: Clark Goble

Clark Goble — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 22:23:14 +0000

Bezos has a long game with Amazon. I’ve no idea what he plans with the WP.

Ultimately the issue is even large city papers are struggling. For a small market to have two papers seems crazy. Especially when one is a fairly diverse media system (KSL TV, KSL radio, Deseret News, plus all the Bonneville stuff) Of course the Huntsman family is extremely wealthy and I’m sure they want to ensure a diversity of voices, especially given the history of the last nearly 150 years.

By: Frank McIntyre

Frank McIntyre — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 21:47:53 +0000

Bezos seems to be running Amazon as a charity, so I guess it makes sense that he would run the Post that way as well…

By: LongLiveIndependentMedia

LongLiveIndependentMedia — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 21:09:22 +0000

The Trib is a strong paper with an excellent crew of journalists. Sadly, the paper’s website is one of the worst of any major media websites in the country. Hopefully the sale will lead to an improved online reading experience.

By: Last Lemming

Last Lemming — Wed, 20 Apr 2016 20:50:59 +0000

Jim Dabakis has claimed that “it looks like The Salt Lake Tribune will be a daily or once-a-week supplement inside the [Deseret News]…” But then he also claimed that Huntsman had “given up” trying to buy the paper. Can we assume that Dabakis was as wrong about the Trib becoming a DN supplement as he was about Huntsman?