Stop the Press Read online

  Published 2018 by Prometheus Books

  Stop the Press: How the Mormon Church Tried to Silence the Salt Lake Tribune. Copyright © 2018 by James W. Ure. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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  Cover design by Liz Mills

  Cover design © Prometheus Books

  Salt Lake Tribune Bones of Contention series reprinted with permission © Salt Lake Tribute.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Ure, James W., 1939- author.

  Title: Stop the press : how the Mormon Church tried to silence the Salt Lake Tribune / by James W. Ure.

  Other titles: How the Mormon Church tried to silence the Salt Lake Tribune

  Description: Amherst, New York : Prometheus Books, [2017] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017019777 (print) | LCCN 2017054614 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633883406 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633883390 (pbk.)

  Subjects: LCSH: Salt Lake tribune—History | Newspaper publishing—Utah—Salt Lake City—History. | Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints—History. | Mormon Church—History. | Deseret news (Salt Lake City, Utah)—History. | Newspaper publishing—Political aspects—Utah—History. | Journalism—Political aspects—Utah—History. | Utah—Politics and government—History.

  Classification: LCC PN4899.S385 (ebook) | LCC PN4899.S385 U84 2017 (print) | DDC 071.792/258—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019777

  Printed in the United States of America

  Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

  —First Amendment, Constitution of the United States

  Note to the Reader

  Chapter 1: Bombshell

  Chapter 2: Deep and Historical Resentments

  Chapter 3: Missouri Massacre

  Chapter 4: Golden Plates Again

  Chapter 5: Polygamy and Baptism for the Dead

  Chapter 6: A Press Destroyed and Peril to the Prophet

  Chapter 7: Brigham Young Takes the Reins of a Church in Chaos

  Chapter 8: Westward Ho

  Chapter 9: Paiute Indians

  Chapter 10: A New Mormon Newspaper

  Chapter 11: Scapegoating

  Chapter 12: Brigham's Fury at the Feds and Carpetbaggers

  Chapter 13: The Massacre at Mountain Meadows

  Chapter 14: The War That Almost Was

  Chapter 15: “Fanatics and Whores”

  Chapter 16: The Tribune and ZCMI Are Born

  Chapter 17: The Great Divide and the Border Ruffians

  Chapter 18: Mountain Meadows: Brigham Young's Scapegoat

  Chapter 19: The Devil in the Form of C. C. Goodwin

  Chapter 20: Enter Thomas Kearns

  Chapter 21: Battle Royal for the Tribune

  Chapter 22: Mormons vs. the Outside World

  Chapter 23: Mountain Meadows Redux

  Chapter 24: MediaNews Group Buys the Tribune

  Chapter 25: The Tribune's Buy-Back Option

  Chapter 26: Singleton Bankrupt, Alden Global Capital Swoops In

  Chapter 27: The Note and Its Consequences

  Chapter 28: Enter and Reenter the Huntsman Family

  Chapter 29: Whither the LDS Church?

  Chapter 30: The Tribune's Future

  Author's Note

  Acknowledgments

  Appendix: Three Tribune Articles in Full about the Excavation at the Mountain Meadows Massacre Site

  Notes

  Index

  “Mormon,” “LDS,” “Saints,” and “Latter-day Saints” are used interchangeably in this book, but all refer to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We have used “Mountain Meadows,” although it is sometimes seen elsewhere as “Mountain Meadow,” singular.

  Revenge proves its own executioner.

  —John Ford

  To live in Salt Lake City you must choose sides.

  You are either a “good” and obedient Mormon or else you join the side of the dissidents, dropouts, and non-Mormons. Termed the “Great Divide” in the nineteenth century, choosing sides is part of living in this city.

  The conflicts between the two sides are historical, bitter, and even bloody. In this work they are seen through the prism of its two competing daily newspapers. This book sheds light on how the church influences and manages the politics, business, and the institutional ethos of the state of Utah.

  The Deseret News was founded in 1850 by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (known as Mormons from their bible, the Book of Mormon).1 The News is a faith-promoting publication of the church and is embraced by active Mormons. Its editorial material is kept within the firm boundaries of mainstream Mormon thought. It represents the conservative Mormon establishment.

  The Deseret News is the voice of a church founded in 1830. The Mormon Church has striven for recognition as a mainstream religion, surviving and thriving on the uniqueness of its founding, its past, and its beliefs.

  The Salt Lake Tribune, founded in 1871 by active but dissident Mormons and owned for over a century by a Catholic family, had been the secular, critical watchdog of the Mormon Church. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 1957 and had grown in editorial stature and advertising lineage to become the newspaper of record for the city.2

  The Tribune had been called “the balance wheel of Utah causing it to take leadership in, or join, every cause that advanced the economic social and cultural welfare of Utah to the benefit of all Utahns—Mormon and gentile alike.”3 The Tribune's circulation had traditionally been about twice that of the Deseret News. The Tribune is a more liberal voice in a state often considered the reddest of the red.

  The two dailies represented the opposing sides of the Great Divide, yet since 1952 they worked profitably as partners in a joint operating agreement (JOA). This agreement to combine printing, circulation, and advertising departments under a JOA brought together the leaders of both factions. Non-Mormons (called gentiles by members of the LDS Church) joined Mormons in the 1990s to secure the 2002 Winter Olympics. A feeling of conditional goodwill settled like a warm blanket over both sides of the divide. Most Salt Lakers thought the bitter history had reached détente.

  They were wrong. As we shall see, the Mormon Church's resentment toward the Tribune had smoldered for years.

  At least as early as 1995 the Mormon Church was secretly maneuvering to acquire the Tribune. A nasty legal fight ensued, and by 2000 the Trib
une's Catholic owners were dismayed when a court case turned the newspaper over to a Mormon-friendly media conglomerate, MediaNews Group.4 After a series of financial and legal missteps by the MediaNews Group, Alden Global Capital had come to own the Salt Lake Tribune. The New York–based Alden in 2012 was called the “grandfather of vulture investing” by the New York Post.5

  In 2013 the church saw an opening in the JOA that might enable it to take down the paper once and for all. In the autumn of that year the church made a secret deal with Alden to buy assets of the Tribune. The Mormon Church would then bleed the Tribune to death.

  Alden was paid $23 million; in return, Alden gave the church's Deseret News 70 percent of the profits from a long-standing JOA with the Tribune, cutting the Tribune to a slender 30 percent. For most of the sixty-one years of joint operation, the Tribune was allocated 58 percent of the profits and the News 42 percent, based on each paper's circulation. On the JOA ledger sheet of November 2013, the transaction is listed as “(Gain) Loss on sale of Newspaper ($23,000,000).”6

  The secret 2013 deal made certain that the Tribune—with nearly double the hard copy circulation (about 73,000 daily versus 37,500 at the News) and the more profitable of the two papers—would starve to death, leaving Utahns with the Mormon Church's single voice of news and opinion.

  The agreement was secret until seven months later when unsigned notes in unmarked envelopes were opened by Tribune reporters Tom Harvey, Robert Gehrke, and columnist Paul Rolly in the City Room of the Tribune:7

  “Church and John Paton are renegotiating JOA. Tribune will be left with very little. Deal is Tribune for cash.” It was written in a ragged scrawl meant to disguise the handwriting.

  Fig. 1.1. The “Note,” arrived in the Salt Lake Tribune newsroom anonymously.

  The Mormons were ready to sit back and watch their 144-year-old nemesis die from lack of revenue. Furthermore, a clause in the contract allowed the church to veto any prospective purchaser of the paper. The deal appeared to guarantee the demise of the Tribune. Even its publisher said it was in a “death spiral.”8

  The Mormon Church, with a history of vengeance and a long memory, had been lying in wait for this moment.

  In 1997 the Tribune had been sold for more than $730 million.9 In 2016 the Tribune was valued at $5 million and sinking. The church argued that its 2013 deal was magnanimous in giving the Tribune 100 percent of any digital revenues it could generate, and the church claimed that all printed newspapers were dying and news was going all digital. But, Tribune publisher Terry Orme asked, if you slash revenues by half, where would the resources come from to develop a robust, competitive digital presence?10

  Historically, the Tribune had been a large and prickly burr under the saddle of Mormonism. From its founding in 1871, the Tribune frequently called attention to acts and beliefs embarrassing to the Mormons, especially polygamy. The Tribune called for the separation of church and state when they were one in the same (and mostly still are in Utah). It called for open records in a place where most government office holders are Mormon and many deals are done, Mormon-to-Mormon, out of public sight.

  In 1924, recognizing the economic value of détente with the large Mormon business community, the Tribune dialed down the tone of its criticism of the church. In 1952 the two papers signed the JOA, creating a company called Newspaper Agency Corporation to handle the ad sales, printing, and circulation of both papers. This agreement saved the Deseret News from perishing, according to historians.11 For the next sixty years both papers would enjoy substantial profits as partners.

  While the Tribune and Deseret News worked in their partnership, the Tribune served its readers with the dissenting side of the major issues confronting Mormonism—the church's opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, its failure to fully church African Americans until 1978, its stand on homosexuality, the contorted church-controlled liquor laws, and the church's denying its women the priesthood or a significant voice in church affairs. However, it was, as one former staffer called it, “soft reporting.”12

  In 1991 the Tribune got a new and assertive editor, James E. “Jay” Shelledy. Described as “pugnacious,” he encouraged his reporters to take a more aggressive stance in covering the Mormon Church.13

  For the next decade the Tribune took the gloves off in its stories about the church. The façade of Mormonism remained placid in the face of Shelledy's uncompromising direction, but beneath the surface the Mormon leaders were boiling mad and secretly working to buy the Tribune and extinguish or mute its voice.14

  The Mormon hierarchy was most bitter about the Tribune's reporting in 2000 of the archeological details revealed during an excavation at the site of the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, a unique event of monstrous proportion that was ordered at the highest levels of the church. It was this three-part series (see appendix for full articles) that intensified the church's determination to kill the Tribune.

  The revelation of the deal to cut the Tribune's revenues brought a roar of dismay from Utah's dissident Mormons and its non-Mormons, the independents and liberals who represent at least about half the population of Salt Lake City. Says a Mormon Church insider who asked not to be identified, “The church wanted the Tribune dead. They just didn't want their fingerprints on the knife.”15

  Just as the knife was about to be plunged, it looked as if a small cadre of Davids had brought the giant church Goliath to its knees, and a long-time suitor stepped up to make an offer.

  Retribution and revenge are part and parcel of the history of Mormonism, and there is little doubt that the 2013 deal made by the Deseret News was revenge for more than a century of perceived slights.

  The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

  —W. B. Yeats

  To understand the twenty-first century conflict between Mormons, dissidents, and non-Mormons as reflected in the newspaper struggle, it is necessary to explore the intriguing origins and growth of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Peggy Fletcher Stack, the Salt Lake Tribune's religion writer, and herself an active Mormon, wrote, “The tales of Joseph Smith's founding of the LDS Church have been repeated across the globe by generations of Latter-day Saints, as well as Mormon missionaries, eager to convert others to what they believe.

  “Trouble is, the real history is much more nuanced, complicated and even contradictory.”1

  Founded in 1830, the young and fragile Mormon Church loathed and decried public criticism from earliest days, assuming a defensive posture that has never changed. “Like many new faiths, nineteenth century Mormonism had a dark side of violence and fanaticism,” wrote Will Bagley in his Blood of the Prophets: Brigham Young and the Massacre at Mountain Meadows.2

  About the only noncontroversial facts of founder Joseph Smith's early life are that he was born on December 23, 1805, in Sharon, Vermont, to Lucy Mack Smith and her husband, Joseph. Due to crop failures in Vermont, his family in 1816 moved to Palmyra in western New York. They arrived during the “Second Great Awakening”; the region was a hotbed of religious enthusiasm.3

  At this point Joseph's story becomes more opaque. Joseph and some members of his family participated in religious folk magic, a fairly common practice at the time. Now the mists of history begin swirling with claims and counterclaims. There seem to be many versions of the truth of the origins of the Book of Mormon.

  Joseph claimed to have had a vision in 1820, when he was fourteen or fifteen, in which God told him that all contemporary churches had turned aside from the gospel. This “First Vision” is considered the basis for the foundation of Mormonism.4 Joseph described this vision differently on separate occasions.5

  The next act in the drama came in 1823. While praying for redemption for his sins, he said he was visited by an angel named Moroni. Joseph said Moroni revealed the location of a book of golden plates.

  Meanwhile, he was making money as a “treasure seeker” for local property owners; Joseph claimed he could look into
seer stones for directions to treasure.6 He formed a company or partnership based on these alleged abilities. In 1826, Joseph was brought before a Chenango County court for “glass-looking,” or pretending to find lost treasure.7

  In 1827, Joseph eloped with Emma Hale (her father disapproved of his treasure-hunting ways) and returned to Manchester, Vermont. Joseph claimed to have changed, and instead of material pursuits, he was using seer stones in acts of spirituality.8

  Joseph said that he made his last annual visit to the hill in Manchester on September 22, 1827, taking Emma with him. He claimed to have found the golden plates and hidden them. Several days later he retrieved them. He said the angel commanded him not to show the plates to anyone else but to publish their translation, a religious record of indigenous Americans.9

  Richard Lyman Bushman, in his laudable book, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling, wrote of the golden plates, “For most modern readers, the plates are beyond belief, a phantasm, yet the Mormon sources accept them as fact.”10 For those strong in the faith, the story resonates with spiritual significance.

  Joseph, who at this point did not know how to write, transcribed the characters that he said were engraved on the plates. Joseph dictated a translation to his wife using what he called the Urim and Thummim, a pair of “three-cornered diamonds” bound like spectacles in silver bows.11

  In February 1828, Martin Harris began assisting Joseph in transcribing. A blanket was raised on a rope dividing Joseph from Harris. Joseph would place the seer stones in the bottom of a tall hat, and then he would read out his translation of what he termed “Reformed Egyptian.” Joseph warned Harris that if he dared look at him or examine the plates that God would strike him down.12

  Joseph, using the Urim and Thummim, continued to dictate to Harris until mid-June 1828, when Harris began having doubts about the project. Harris convinced Joseph to let him take the existing 116 pages of manuscript to Palmyra to show a few family members. Harris promptly lost the manuscript (or possibly his disbelieving wife destroyed it), and there was no other copy.13