Give Me Freedom or Give Me Spam 2

[Media] Again, how does this help keep anything "free"? And why didn't the Salt Lake Tribune version ask you to be 16 or older? (Bill Frost)

Get that Hser Nay Moo Story

[Media Clusterf**k] And so it begins.

In the 36 hours since South Salt Lake police arrested 21-year-old Esar Met on suspicion of murdering little Hser Nay Moo (right), the mainstream media have gone ape shit for even the tiniest shred of drama to tell this story.

It's no surprise, especially given the cultural complexities involved in covering the story. There's a language barrier, and the families involved are recent refugees from a distant and tumultuous country (Burma, now known as Myanmar). It's clear the members of both the victim's and the suspect's families know nothing about the U.S. legal system, so it's suddenly open season on these people beset by tragedy. Nobody is about to "lawyer up," that's for sure.

To wit, this latest piece of crap: Today's Deseret Morning News, KSL radio and Salt Lake Tribune all have sketchy comments from the murder suspect's mother, Ra He Mar. Having fled from Myanmar, then having finally gotten out of a Thai refugee camp where she lived for 18 years, the woman has been in the United States for two weeks. (Though the Trib is reporting one month.) Whatever. She's scarcely had time to get over jet lag. Ra He Mar can barely utter a word in English, was interviewed through a interpretor and has no grasp of the American legal system. And surprise: she says her son is a good boy. [Esar Met] "had never run afoul of the law before or displayed any behavior indicating he was capable of killing," according to the Tribune's account from his mother.

Well, it's all done because by damn, some editor at a desk decided you need to know. Does this kind of media scramble strike anyone else as fairly cannibalistic? (Holly Mullen)

News Flash from The Mormon Times!

[Media] Oh how I treasure knowing that the D-News has shed light on what's going on with that mysterious segment of Utah's population, known as "the Mormons." You may have thought the D-News' LDS news line column, Religion and Ethics column or...the rest of it's paper, was covering the latest coming off the Latter-day wire, well you were wrong.

The latest breaking news The Mormon Times tells us is a list the Church is presenting on LDS vocabulary they are officially retiring. Some of these quaint terms were quite apropos during the nifty fifties but apparently don't have a place any longer in the modern church vocab.

Just for fun I'll list some of the obsolete terms and you try and guess why the church is reluctant to be using them anymore (just for help I will provide some italicized hints).

Deseret Sunday School Union: the original name of the church's Sunday school program.

(The last man to organize a Sunday school union strike against the church disappeared Jimmy Hoffa-style... into outer darkness)

Rainbows: a name for primary age girls. (Damn hippie children ruined that one for the LDS kids)

Gaynotes: original name for girls in the Liahona or "little homemaker" program. (insert own joke here)

M-Men and Gleaners: young men and young women's departments in the church's 1921 MIA program. (I swear I saw an ad for M-Men and Gleaners somewhere in the back of one of the City Weekly classifieds around here somewhere...) (Eric S. Peterson)

It's Mormon Times

[Newspapers] Here in the small, small world of Salt Lake City media, we've been aware for months of the Deseret Morning News' plan to launch a new Web site, Mormon Times. Yup, honest, it's really called that. For the rest of you, official news of the site broke a few days ago.

Of course, God's newspaper can do what it wants, and it always does. But I do get a little pang of nostalgia when I remember back to my first real newspaper job, as a cub reporter in 1981, at what was then the Deseret News. I promise not to go all weepy and memory lane on you, but there was a time in that publication's history when even the power brokers at the LDS mother ship on 50 E. North Temple were mostly content to offer readers a newspaper wide in scope, diverse in coverage and driven to do investigative journalism with little fear of political or religious repercussions. (Interestingly, the vaunted three-person investigative reporting team in the '70s and early '80s was two-thirds non-Mormon)

So. Well. Times change. An editor who once served as a busy Washington D.C. lobbyist, whose brother is a sitting congressman and who never worked for a newspaper before calls the shots now. Just like every other newspaper, the DMN is fighting to survive in an electronic age. Whatever works. It's just ... sad.

(Holly Mullen)

... Don't we all?

[Unintentional Smut] Massage schools are so ubiquitous in Salt Lake City these days and the market so competitive, you know masseurs must always be looking for ways to provide a little something extra for their clients.

According to the D-News headline, "syrupy touches" aren't the only things Ute fans like ...
(Brandon Burt)

Only Mormon Minds Need Apply

[Media] You may recall a Salt Blog post regarding lobbyist/state GOP chairman/cum Deseret Morning News publisher Joe Cannon's announcement earlier this month about new niche publications that would target a whole new audience: Mormon readers!

Well, the work has begun. A concerned staff member of the Deseret Morning News just sent CW this e-mail about a couple of new openings to be filled soon at God's Newspaper. Here is the e-mail, forwarded by the staffer:

Soon there will be two open positions for writers and/or editors in a yet-to-be-named department working on yet-to-be-named new sections of the newspaper that will emphasize news and features of LDS interest. We're looking for people who have demonstrated strong news writing, reporting and/or editing abilities. Applicants must be familiar with LDS faith and culture, and able to produce content that will be of interest to a growing readership in print and online. The niche for these new sections will be: less "official" than the LDS Church News, more feature-oriented than City Desk's breaking-news coverage of the LDS Church and related events, and more LDS-specific than the weekly Religion/Ethics section. Employees of the new department also might participate in production of the Church News section. We'll be looking both inside and outside the Deseret Morning News to fill these slots. If you are interested, or know someone who might be, contact David Schneider, daves@desnews.com or 237-2158.

The source, who fears reprisal if named, points out: "Many non-LDS employees [of the DMN] are of course worried that a targeted emphasis on the LDS Church/LDS culture will make it even more difficult -- and it is plenty hard already -- to convince sources that we're fair and objective." (Holly Mullen)

The New Mormon News

[Media] A few years ago we seem to recall the Deseret Morning News (then known as the Deseret News, sans Morning) tried to increase its readership by expanding its appeal to non-LDS readers. The reporting staff was beefed up. A hot shot, Pulitzer Prize winner was brought in to edit the paper. The News wasn’t going to be just for Mormons anymore.

Apparently, the plan didn’t work out as well as expected.

New editor Joe Cannon in a recent memo to staff explains that the D-News has found an exciting new niche of readers to target … Mormons. To that end, he has appointed a new “assistant managing editor for LDS faith and culture” and is planning several new publications to target the faithful.

“We also have the great fortune of having a second, perhaps even more valuable, niche: the LDS culture,” Cannon writes staffers. “The worldwide market for that niche is sizeable.”

The editor ominously ads filling that niche will require “real fundamental change.”

You can read Cannon’s memo here, as posted on “Memo’s sent to Romenesko,” a newspaper industry forum compiled by Jim Romenesko on Poynter Online. (Ted McDonough)

Get Me Rewrite!

[Eulogy] Today I attended Lou Bate's funeral. Bate died of complications from a stroke last week in Bountiful. He was 82.

So give me a trip down Memory Lane, wouldja?

Lou was my first "real world" newspaper editor. He put in nearly four decades at the Deseret Morning News. He was city editor for 13 years -- from 1974 to 1987. This was the glory era for many American newspapers, even the D-News. It was the post-Watergate period, the same year Richard Nixon resigned. But locally, it was the D-News -- surprisingly to many who read the paper nowadays -- that kicked ass with investigative journalism. The paper embraced serious investigative reporting with its "Pinpoint Team," consisting of three great reporters (Bob Mullins, Joe Costanzo, Dale Van Atta). The team regularly broke stories of political corruption, consumer fraud and pretty much worked to keep Utah pols honest.

In that brief time, the then-afternoon paper made The Salt Lake Tribune (its gray front page still running a load of wire copy) look paltry. The D-News was every bit as Mormon Church-owned as it is today. But executive editor Bill Smart and (the late) managing editor DeAnn Evans were pros who kept the news pages honest. Somehow they managed to maintain a sense of journalistic independence that really no longer exists at the paper.

They also saw to it that the news had an actual "news hole." If the story had merit, they saw there was enough space to publish it with facts and context.

Neither of Salt Lake's mainstream dailies can claim that high ground today -- even though on-line space is infinite. Mostly, the stories lack depth. Context.

Bill, DeAnn and Lou also made a point of hiring a lot of "gentiles," aka non-Mormons, in that decade and a half. It helped keep the newsroom even, honest and a lot of fun. My first job fresh out of the U. of U. was covering the suburbs with four other twenty-somethings. Lou was always exuding power from his desk at the front of the (male-dominated) newsroom. He scared the shit out of us newbies, actually.

Lou was a stickler for good reporting and editing. He was a man of few words, but when he had something to tell a young and naive reporter, he said it. Not so much loudly, but very firmly. I learned a lot from him. As role models go, Ed Asner's "Lou Grant" comes to mind. Most people won't remember that TV character from the '70s, I'm sure. Lou Grant was tough and crusty. So was Lou Bate. And yes, Lou had a soft side. Sometimes he'd slip and call a young reporter "pal." Somehow, even after making what seemed the worst mistake possible, hearing "pal" always made me feel better.

RIP Lou. (Holly Mullen)

The Only True Media

[Spirited] Senate Majority Leader and highest-ranking U.S. political Mormon Harry Reid dropped by the BYU campus on Tuesday to chat with the kids about faith and spirituality. Following his remarks, a 12-minute, downright secular press conference showed that Reid truly is Satan's houseboy on earth because he practices his Mormon faith and he's a Democrat.

All the mainstream media reps were there, which makes us wonder -- were the two Salt Lake City dailies even at the same event?

Salt Lake Tribune headline, here.

Deseret Morning News headline, here.

(Holly Mullen)

Thanks for Clearing That Up

[Revisionist History] Favorite correction of the day from the Deseret Morning News:

"Due to an editing error, a story on the Mountain Meadows massacre in Saturday's editions reported that historical accounts have 'erroneously' portrayed Brigham Young as the one who ordered the massacre. That sentence should have run as the bylined reporter wrote it: Other historical accounts—and a new fictionalized feature film, September Dawn—have portrayed Young as the one who ordered the massacre."

So glad they cleared up that Brigham-with-blood-on-his-hands thing! (Holly Mullen)

Funniest Deseret News Headline Ever

Traditional definition of Taint. The other definition of Taint. Pick your favorite. (Bill Frost)