Bucking trends, Utah's Mormon neewspaper sees gains

A dozen years ago, the publisher of The Salt Lake Tribune walked into a board meeting at the city's other newspaper, the Deseret News, and offered a blunt assessment.

"This town isn't big enough for two newspapers," said Dominic Welch, now retired from running Utah's largest daily, circulation around 120,000.

Welch finished by telling Deseret News executives "it ain't going to be you," according to their account.

Welch said he doesn't recall making the last half of the statement, but he said his prediction is more timely now with many big-city newspapers getting slaughtered financially. And notably, he believes the Deseret News, with a weekday circulation of nearly 74,000, eventually could be this city's last paper standing because of the commitment and deep pockets of its owner, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"The story is there's going to be one paper. It's happening around the country," Welch said. "My guess is it's going to be the Deseret News. They can survive anything."

Veteran newspaper analyst John Morton said The Salt Lake Tribune remains viable but that the Deseret News stands out for being practically bulletproof.

"The Deseret News will survive because the church wants it to," said Morton, president of media consulting firm Morton Research Inc. of Silver Spring, Md.

The News is among a select few metro or national papers that lately have posted circulation gains and something of a curious case.

Joe Cannon, now in his third year as editor, set out to make the newspaper and its Web site more appealing to Mormon readers. The effort already has made the paper's Web site unusually active for a news organization its size, with 17 million page views a month. Visitors tend to linger, and half of them are from outside Utah, affirming Cannon's strategy even as online advertising revenues remain marginal.

His aim is to reach out to "a very large Mormon diaspora across the country" that "puts us into a much larger pond," said Cannon, who was on the board of the Deseret News for a decade before taking over as editor.

Cannon is a lawyer from a well-connected family in Utah. Most recently, he was chairman of the Utah Republican Party for four years until 2006. His grandfather and great-grandfather were among editors of the Deseret News.