Newspaper battle as seen by N.Y. Times

SALT LAKE CITY — This city has a simple logic. First Street begins a block from the temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; the remainder of the streets radiate out from there. The map mirrors Utah's civic life. For Mormons and non-Mormons alike — the city's population is split about 50-50 — the central reference point is the church. It is the spiritual home of 11 million members and the financial repository of an estimated $20 billion in assets.

Over the last 18 months, AT&T executives have learned Salt Lake's psychic map all too well. Their effort to unload the Salt Lake Tribune, an $81-million-a-year pipsqueak of a business within their $112 billion corporate empire, has aroused sectarian resentments that this prosperous, seemingly placid city cannot seem to shake.

At the center of it are the morning Tribune, founded 129 years ago by Mormon dissidents, and its afternoon rival, the church-owned Deseret News. Each is run by executives who assert that their paper's core values — or its survival — face a mortal threat from the other.

Though viscerally at odds over business strategy, they handcuffed themselves together in a joint operating agreement under which they share presses, circulation crews and advertising staff members. The arrangement, 48 years old, has kept both in business and profitable, but it has also bred allegations of mismanagement and bad faith. Each newsroom periodically grumbles that the other skews the news.

AT&T stumbled inadvertently into this beehive. It got the Tribune when it bought the newspaper's owner, TeleCommunications Inc., the cable television company based in Englewood, Colo. Almost as soon as the TCI deal closed, AT&T began looking to sell the newspaper so it could focus on expanding cable services. Two years later, that cable strategy is dead — AT&T decided to spin off the business last year — though it took the company until last week to reach a deal. The company agreed to sell the paper to the MediaNews Group for $200 million to try to end the irritation. Tribune executives lost their first court challenge to block the deal but plan to be back in federal court with new claims this week.