Deseret News making bold move for the digital age

The upheaval shaking up the entire communications industry hit Utah last week. The Deseret News and KSL Radio/TV news staffs are merging, resulting in layoffs for nearly half of the newspaper staff. We analyze the ramifications.

Will the new KSL/Deseret News business model be successful?

Webb: It is fascinating that the LDS Church, an institution considered to be careful and conservative, would, on the same day, take two enormous high-risk leaps — independence for BYU football and an entirely new business model for the Deseret News. This is a bold move, as aggressive as anything being done in the news business. The church really is a faith-based institution.

On paper, the business model makes sense. The future is clearly mobile, Web-based, global communications. Even when I was at the paper more than a decade ago, we had ambitions to become the news and information portal for the worldwide LDS Church membership. With some 14 million members, it's a huge market.

In an era of digital convergence, it absolutely makes sense for the church to merge its communications business assets — TV, radio, print and online — that are essentially engaged in the same pursuits. The combined Web operation will be an absolute powerhouse, with far greater reach and readership than the Salt Lake Tribune or most other news websites in the country. However, merging staffs, and the logistics of producing news in one shop for print, radio, TV and the Web, will be difficult.

Pignanelli: "The media … is lazy. We fed them and they ate it every day." — Michael Deaver (deputy chief of staff to Ronald Reagan).