Reader comments
Letter from the editor

I have always enjoyed the Deseret News. I read it every day and I have no problems with it. I think you're doing a great job!!!

With all due respect to Mr. Cannon and the paper, I have always believed that a great paper must have a great journalist at its helm. Mr. Cannon served on the paper's board for years before taking his current post, but, at least in my view, that experience does not qualify him to lead journalists in the business challenges they currently face. If the Deseret News wants to be a first-rate paper and weather the business storms it faces, it needs a first-rate journalist to lead it.

The subject of Mr. Cannon's apology -- his poor choice of words to describe the paper's future goals -- is a perfect example in support of my view. Full of short-hand enthusiasm, it lacked a journalist's careful and credible statement of fact.

As a subscriber and daily reader, my hopes for success are with Mr. Cannon and the paper. However, a wise and experienced journalist would never need to apologize for his description of his goals for his paper's future. "[An] unfortunate choice of words" would be the last thing a good journalist should apologize for.

As a Latter-day Saint in Australia, I regularly read the Deseret news website (especially your movie reviews). I think your paper's one of the best! Keep up the great work....More Mormon - all the better!!!

My family and I have not lived in Utah for six years, but I have read the Deseret News online nearly every day since we left. We want news about Utah, and the online layout of the Deseret News is simply superior to the Tribune. But more than that, we love the reporters and writers at the Deseret News. They are the best in the business. We've lived in two different cities in Texas now, and neither local newspaper here could match the DesNews. Thanks for providing superb content.

How naive we are to think that to be more focused on a core audience that shares similar values could mean "prejudice" or "skewed". The society of people who we often categorize as Mormon are very diverse in many ways both in Utah and all around the world - but they also share some enviable common ideals.

For the Deseret News to survive in the constantly changing world of news and information they must look to their core audience as a lens and a focus of how do "we as Mormons" see the world. Our view is unique and if we just depend on the A.P. and Knightrider service for all of our perspective then we deserve to get our information through a lens that is not always in line with our values.

I applaud the Des. News for making this bold change and look forward to more perspective that is unique to our culture. Your reporting can be just as hard hitting in uncovering the truth through an unequaled effort to bring light on to the situations reported. I hope it will find itself more pervasive throughout the newspaper over time as there are so few news sources who see the world with our unparalleled view.

Keep up the good work!

will you issue a translation in plain english?

When did the Deseret News have a "dedication to credible, hard-hitting, objective journalism?" I haven't seen it in the past 10 years. Spin, Joe, spin!

So what was the phrase??? A newspaper dedicated to accuracy should at least repeat the phrase that is the subject of the entire article--not try to hide it for a quick clean-up and move-on job.

I used to subscribe to the Deseret News. When I first subscribed it was delivered by 5:00 am. Then a few months later that slipped to 6:00 am. A few weeks later it became 6:30 am. After complaining to the circulation and customer service departments, delivery slipped to 7:00 am. It was then that I dropped my subscription.

I'd suggest you worry less about your mission statement and concentrate on your customers and serving them.

Your online edition is one of the best.

I'm not so pleased with the results of "more Mormon." I am a very active Latter-day Saint living in Utah County. I am a convert of 44 years born and raised in New York City. Two things bother me. One is the general LDS content that is being published. For my taste there is too much LDS pop culture and too much attention to "fringe" aspects of the religion. The exact location of Zarahemla, the amount of caffeine it takes to make a sin, and other such inquiries that trivialize the LDS religion to the outside world. Of course there are Mormons measuring their caffeine content and there are Catholics looking for an image of Mary on the freezer door, but this is not the core of Mormonism or Catholocism. The media loves to trivialize religion because it cannot grasp the depth of faith and commitment that sustains religion. Please don't become an unwitting (or perhaps witting) contributor to this. I'm sure there are many famous people who are Catholic. Why would that be news? If you make LDS members famous for their church affiliation, you are not serving the Church. The second thing bothering me will follow.

Well, the backpedalling tore up the ground a bit, didn't it? Still, though, not much traction was achieved and we didn't get much explanation.
It will be interesting how this all manifests itself in the future. More mormon? It will be interesting to see what the paper will become less of to achieve it.
Anyway, we'll have fun with it.

...the more they stay the same. The century before last Orson F Whitney wrote of the Trib: "Its only principle, apparently, was hatred of everything Mormon."
Although I've lived in Chicago for 30 years I still marvel at how polarized Salt Lake is. You really have to read about an issue in both papers and then figure out the truth through extrapolation.
We sometimes forget that newspapers began as a way to publicize your point of view and get advertisers to subsidize the cost.
This idea of fairness and lack-of-bias is a relatively recent notion. The wire services leveled out some of the bias but rarely get the story right. (Else local reporters would be superfluous.)
No apology needed, Joe. You are a Mormon paper with a Mormon style book and Mormon guidelines regarding coverage. In short, you are a newspaper and need not apologize for your bias.
You MUST NOT try to fool the public into thinking you are anything else.

The second thing bothering me is the comments. Throwing core LDS beliefs to an open forum is casting pearls before swine. That would be true for any religion, but those waiting in the wings to denigrate LDS beliefs are very active at the moment. You have provided them (unwittingly, or wittingly) a wonderful forum. Any good you think you may be doing by providing information to Latter-day Saints throughout the world is totally offset by the crass nature of the opposition to whom you have given a voice. Are you deliberatly trying to test the newly converted by throwing them "meat" when they need "milk?" Examples of faith, repentance, baptism, the gift of the Holy Ghost, and endurance should be the order of the day. Such things do not need comments from detractors, but if they do make them, then they would be revealed for who they really are. I've tried to counter some of the worst comments, but I cannot keep up with it--there's too much else important to do than to answer detractors inane comments. In summary, Mr. (Brother) Cannon, there is much you need to do to fix the "more Mormon" aspect of the paper. Please.

Your content is no better, no worse than most.

You lost me when you decided to make me walk to the end of my long driveway in my underwear to pick the paper out of the gutter, so I can read it with my breakfast.

When you decide to do what all the rest of America does, which is delivery the paper to the front porch, be sure and let it be known, and I will re-subscribe. Until then, it doesn't matter what you print, if it sits in the road.

I love apologies and take this one at face value, but . . . .

The last thing the Deseret News needs is to head in the direction that both the mission statement and Editor Cannon's "bumper-sticker" version of it seem to indicate.

Both LDS readers and non-LDS readers (a more important audience to worry about if you ask me) need: 1) an objective source of information on world and local events; 2) representative of both sides of the issues; 3) together with a trustworthy source for matters with a unique LDS perspective; 4) without letting that perspective overwhelm the reporting or the reader.

In many ways, the Deseret News accomplishes this remarkable well.

In other ways, its parochialism and lack of objective reporting are astounding.

To me, Mr. Cannon's statement said, in effect, "we're going to move more of what we do from the first category into the second" and that would be sad.

But, I accept the clarification that he meant something different. I guess let's leave it at that and see what happens.

Oh, yea, and some proof reading and quotation marks would helped clarify his statement.

Dang, a brief, shining moment of minimal honesty where there was at least an acknowledgement of what was going to take place . . .

But now a retreat to Orwellian doublespeak and the world of Winston Smith (you folks did read those books when you were young, didn't you?).

Those singing this newspaper's praises likely haven't experienced the censorship I found here when objective facts were apparently deemed offensive.

While the rest of America deeply mourns the horribly premature passing of a genuinely brilliant, incisive and yet fair journalist, the Deseret News attempts to further its owner's agenda and yet lacks the integrity to admit it.

Well, at least Joe came right out said Deseret will be unfair and unbalanced to giveway to the mormon agenda. His paper, his values...we'll just go elsewhere for our news without the mormon spin.

My hat is off to Joe Cannon and to the job that he is doing. When print media all over the world is collapsing, he is finding ways to reorganize the DN so that it does not become a victim of the times.

Who says that a newspaper has to print "both" sides of every issue? How many sides does "truth" have? Do "total truth" and "almost truth" mean the same thing or is there "truth" and "lies"?

A newspaper prints facts, short concise, precise facts. Readers are expected to assimilate those facts. An article is not an editorial. An article, if accurate, fulfills its mission. "Slant" is mostly in the eyes of the beholders.

If the DN prints facts accurately and prints articles about the Nation, the State, the communities represented by its readers, and the Church, fairly and completely, then it will be a great and an important newspaper. A newspaper is not a substitute for Sunday School; it should not be expected to preach Doctrine.

The opinion forum in the DN is one of the best that I've ever seen. Anyone can post, regardless of their point of view with very good odds of being published.