The Big Liquor Law Flip-Flop

[Liquor Laws, Again] While driving to work this morning, I heard Salt Lake Tribune political reporter Robert Gehrke  on KSL radio's Doug Wright Show. Wright had invited Gehrke to defend his reporting on this story, dated Feb. 3. Why? Because the night before, on KSL's Nightside Project, Senate President Michael Waddoups did a 180-degree reversal on his earlier position supporting a bill to establish a statewide database of information culled from bar patrons' drivers licenses. 

Waddoups told Nightside Project co-host Ethan Millard the notion of scanning bar codes on drivers' licenses and storing personal data on people for law enforcement purposes is something "we're not even talking about yet," and that "no one's even buying into it at this point."

Lie.

It was a complete flip from his comments two days earlier to the Trib's Gehrke. In that interview, Waddoups discussed the possibility of even extending the data base to restaurants--so they could cross-check information with bars and private clubs to help regulate overserving liquor.

When asked about the varying accounts of his position in the Salt Lake media, Waddoups responded: "Let me give you a bit of advice. Don't believe everything you hear in the press."

Today the public learned that both Sen. John Valentine, R-Orem, and Waddoups have dropped their as-yet unwritten proposals on establishing a drinkers' database.

With KSL's Wright, Gehrke stood by his work on the liquor law stories, and said he quoted Waddoups accurately earlier in the week. 

Whew. 

What I like most about all of this chaos in the past few days is that the watchdog role of the press on this issue worked. It worked like a charm. Valentine and Waddoups conjured up a very bad idea for a law. Members of the local press found out about it early enough in the legislative session to write about it and write some more. The idea that government would have private information on where citizens choose to spend their legal, free time on some database gave people the creeps. It enraged them. Because if there's one common thread between the left and the right, it's that government has no right to snoop into people's personal lives while they're behaving legally.

This is exactly how the press is supposed to do its job. The legislators saw this thing for the potential quagmire it is. They flipped. (BTW, Waddoups has a record for doing so on liquor laws.) Thank god it happened early in the session, when citizens could actually express their rage with it all. Otherwise, we'd have the thing crammed down our throats.

One final note: Gehrke is one of the most thorough and professional reporters in this state, and it's quite clear that Waddoups hung him out to dry. (Holly Mullen)

Iraq War Vets and Suicide

[Vet Suicides] Big props to today's Salt Lake Tribune for a story on the shocking increase in Iraq War vet suicides in Utah.

It's certainly not possible to over-cover this issue. But I want to point out that City Weekly's Stephen Dark wrote an in-depth feature on this topic a full two months ago. Dark met regularly with members of Jason Ermer's family--his parents, brothers, widow and people involved in his care at the Salt Lake City VA hospital. He produced a riveting portrait of this young man and the events that helped drive him to taking his own life on New Year's Eve 2007. You'll get a deeper picture than what the Trib offered today, which is one of the best reasons to read this and other alternative publications. It's about depth and context, and with their ongoing financial and editorial constraints, mainstream media can't go much deeper than the immediate headlines these days. Read Stephen's piece here.

(Holly Mullen)

Ken Salazar: Threat or Menace?

[Media] Here's a case where a reader has to ask: "Were these reporters at the same press conference?"

Prez-elect Barack Obama today officially announced Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., as his choice for Secretary of the Interior.

The New York Times headlined its story this way.

The Salt Lake Tribune headlined its story this way, with Tribune reporter Thomas Burr adding: Environmental groups heralded Salazar's appointment.

(Holly Mullen)

Media Bullseye on West High

[Lazy Media] A story about the rise in cheating, shoplifting, plagiarism and other ethical and criminal misdeeds among high school students (64 percent reported cheating on a school test in the past year; 36 percent acknowledged using the Internet to plagiarize someone else's work) got the Utah mainstream media (MSM) scrambling for that all-important "local angle."

KSL radio reporter Mary Richards got herself straight over to Salt Lake City's West High School--a whole two blocks from the broadcast studio, and interviewed a freshman who was shocked by the news. OK, fine.

Call me an oversensitive mom. Both of my children are products of West High. The oldest graduated in 2006; the youngest will finish in the spring. As sure as you can count on tulips popping up every April, every time the Salt Lake City MSM needs a local prop for some horrendous national teen-trend piece, a reporter trots on over to West to illustrate the issue. Why? It's two blocks from KSL Broadcast House. It's 3/4 of a mile from KUTV's studio. It's three blocks from The Salt Lake Tribune and about 1/2 mile from the Deseret News.

Meanwhile, the image of West as some lab for social miscreants* builds. In the cheating and shoplifting story, the freshman wasn't targeted as a criminal. She was, though, associated with the national story through her comments. I'm pretty sure West High comes across in this city/state as THE ONLY place for roving thugs, gangs and troubled teens--largely because downtown reporters are too lazy to drive more than a mile to get their angle.

BTW, East High School is only three miles from KSL's studio. Highland High is a whole five miles away. And Skyline High? Downtown-based reporters would have to hop on the freeway to get there, but it's only a 15-minute ride. (Holly Mullen)

*Those social miscreants in the above photo are not from West High, but if you follow the local news they could be.

Dateline: Mumbai

[Media Survival] Dean Singleton, CEO of MediaNews Group and publisher of The Salt Lake Tribune is advocating American newspapers start outsourcing certain newsroom tasks overseas. He told a professional newspaper association this week many of his chain's California publications have already saved oodles of cash by outsourcing certain jobs such as copy editing to India.

Singleton, who has spent much of this decade buying up newspapers was already overleveraged--and that was before Wall Street went into the crapper.

Unions at MediaNews Group papers--most of them in California, where the notion of collective bargaining still exists, if barely--are of course none too happy with their boss.

Friends at the Tribune tell me each day brings more uncertainty about their future. They keep their heads down and do their jobs. They are doing all that is asked of them--blogging more, updating more stories all day, working longer hours for less pay. The thanks they get is likely to be a job shipped to Bangalore.

I'm sure comments on this post will simply tell me and others in my profession to suck it up--we're all vulnerable in this country to outsourcing and that newpapers are lumbering dinosaurs that should have faced that reality long ago.

Maybe. All I can hope is that in the depression bound to come our way soon, publishers will hang on to a few American jobs and put people to work ala the old Works Progress Administration model. Maybe a few Trib staffers could be kept on the payroll to push brooms around The Gateway editorial offices?

For more depressing news on editorial outsourcing, go here. (Holly Mullen)

Kopykat Korner

[Media Competition] Three days before this morning's edition of The Salt Lake Tribune, there was City Weekly.

We published this story on October 1.

They published this story on October 4.

As City Weekly intern Joseph Bateman points out in his piece, there are afficionodos of electric car and other alternative energy-fueled vehicles all over the state of Utah. It's practically become an industry for weekend mechanics and alternative energy geeks. So why would the Trib pick the same main subject, with essentially the same photos, to profile as CW did?

I mean, we're flattered over here on our little slice of Main Street. But usually the mainstream media tries to change up their derivative stories just a smidgen. (Holly Mullen)

Why I love Altie Media

[Mainstream Media] After reading this on Saturday morning, I was reminded how happy I am to no longer work for The Salt Lake Tribune. I have no patience for such bat-shit silliness. (Holly Mullen)

Drama at the Trib: No "Easy Button"

[Nervous Media Moguls] Over the past five years, MediaNews Group owner and Salt Lake Tribune publisher Dean Singleton has snapped up newspapers like a brown trout leaping for a nymph hatch. Unfortunately, the economy is tanking in tandem with dramatic drops in daily newspaper readership.

So, the guy owns a chain of newspapers and a boatload of debt. And Singleton is nervous.

The following two-page memo (click images for full size) to MediaNews staffs around the country dated Aug. 8, recently found its way to the City Weekly newsroom. But no way is anyone in Denver pushing the panic button. Or the Easy Button. (Holly Mullen)

Trib Still Hedging Its Global Warming Bets

[So-called Objectivity] Dear Salt Lake Tribune:

Will there come a day when you publish a global warming story that doesn't mince words about the facts of global warming? Will we ever see a piece about climate change that doesn't pose the matter as still up for debate?

Are readers, seriously, supposed to look at hayseed nut-job Rep. Mike Noel (R-Kanab) as any kind of authority on the issue?

Aren't there some topics that really, truly don't have two sides?

Coming next week in the Trib: Is a round Earth fad, fiction or fact?

(Holly Mullen)

Letter of the Day

[Gay Parents' Rights] Easily, the letter of the day in The Salt Lake Tribune. (Holly Mullen)

Aggressive Annexation Goes Too Far?

According to the Trib, 4150 S. 200 East is now part of Cottonwood Heights.

I think that address used to be part of unincorporated Salt Lake County, a few blocks north of Murray. I hope it's not in Murray itself, or this could be the start of an ugly border dispute!

Woohoo! Lock and load, Murray and Cottonwood Heights residents!

(Brandon Burt)

Big Cottonwood Trash Bucket

[Vox Populi] It looks like at least one Salt Lake County resident has noticed the hodge-podge and suburban decay at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon. We love our canyons to death in Utah, and the entry way to this particular well-loved canyon shows how anxious we are to kill it.

Above: The historic Old Mill, which continues to survive gross neglect, vandalism and who-gives-a-shit development all around it.

(Holly Mullen)

SLC Newspapers and the Plyg Wars

[Media] It's been some time since Salt Lake City's two daily newspapers have fought a legitimate war over a breaking story. Truth is, there are many days when neither the Deseret News nor The Salt Lake Tribune is distinguishable in written content or even photos and graphics.

Best example of this: The LDS Church's twice-yearly General Conference. The Tribune often covers the event with every bit of vigor and yes, pandering, as the DN, and it can't even claim ownership by the Mormon Church.

The two papers' coverage of the ongoing mess-o-polygamy in Texas is a shining example of cutthroat competition at its best. In today's coverage of the FLDS child custody saga, the DN got a big scoop over the Trib. By securing copies of e-mails from Washington County officials, the DN was able to publish details of government "dossiers" on certain creepy FLDS leaders, who get a kick out of stalking their perceived enemies and think nothing of threatening them with a little thing called "blood atonement."

The Trib could only follow meekly, with a tepid version of the Associated Press story, which is a rewrite of the DN. In the next few hours news junkies can count on a piece on the Trib Web site with the byline of resident plyg expert, Brooke Adams. Today's morning news budget meeting at the Tribune office would have been a lively exchange among editors. Probably went something like this:

Editor 1: "How did we miss that story?"
Editor 2: "Uh, dunno. But Brooke says we'll have our own story soon. And it will be better than theirs."

Both papers have had at least one full-time reporter and photographer encamped in and around El Dorado, Texas since the initial raid of the YFZ ranch in early April. The DN has gotten the lion's share of periodic scoops, including exclusive photos of the first reunions last week between polygamous mothers and their children. Trent Nelson, an excellent Trib photographer, got downright depressed about missing those pictures. He wrote from the gut about losing to the DN on his Tribune blog, Fly on the Wall. Actually, Nelson has been doing the best documentation all along of back story to the FLDS drama. He captures the adrenaline rush of covering breaking news, while blending in the moments of sheer boredom and frustration of waiting for the next news conference or lucky break. And if nothing else, there's always a comment or two, with photos, of West Texas culture or horrible diner food.

It hasn't been this interesting watching the mainstream media lose bladder control over a story since Elizabeth Smart went missing in 2002. (Holly Mullen)

The DesNews Ax Comes Down

[Utah Media] No one in Utah media circles ever expected this day would come: Deseret News editor (and former D.C. lobbyist) Joe Cannon announced yesterday 35 editorial positions will be cut from the paper by mid-July.

The daily paper, like most across the country, has struggled with declining circulation for years. The main reasons for the endless slump are starting to sound like a mantra--Online competition, combined with aging (and frankly, dying) readers.

But the LDS Church-owned DN has never in its history engaged in mass layoffs. Most media observers have figured the healthy subsidy from the church would always keep the paper chugging along. Also, along with broadcasting giant KSL, the DN has been a key media property/propaganda tool for the church in reaching and influencing its members.

Cannon signals this isn't any kind of death knell, and laid out the newspaper's goals for hopefully, long-term survival: "We will become more local, more online, and more Mormon."

Huh? More Mormon? How is that possible? But whatever.

Meantime, I called several editorial staff members at the DN today for their reaction. All declined to talk much, and asked I not use their names. It's a small journalism community, and I know many DN reporters, photographers and artists. I worked with many of them more than 25 years ago. These were tough conversations.

"We've known something like this was coming for a while now," said one. "It's still pretty depressing."

Three employees told me many older, veteran staffers will probably take the buyout being offered. Said another: "It's gone downhill here since Joe Cannon came on."

On a related note, it's fascinating to read in The Salt Lake Tribune's account that editor Nancy Conway sees no layoffs in the future for her 170 editorial employees. It's sort of an argument of semantics, actually. Publisher Dean Singleton, via Conway, has been melding jobs together to save personnel costs and hiring more part-timers (no obligation to provide benefits) for at least the past two years. Former theater critic Ellen Fagg is now a features editor who doubles as a drama critic. Film critic Sean Means continues to reviews movies, but recently took over duties of former "Culture Vulture" and general arts writer Brandon Griggs. Essentially, it means Means is working two jobs and getting paid for one. (Griggs left the Trib last month for an online job at CNN in Atlanta.)

Conway has been telling her people for a long time now they won't have to "work harder, just smarter. And differently."

And leaner, always leaner. (Holly Mullen)

Buffalo Girls

[Uh, Journalism] As part of their periodic first-person series on how two newbies in Utah tackle the great outdoors, doggone cute Salt Lake Tribune reporters Maggie Thach and Roxana Orellana describe their camping adventure at Antelope Island on the Great Salt Lake.

It's kind of a print version of I Love Lucy--pick your favorite scene with Lucy and Ethel. It's crazy-slapstick! Their tent flaps in the wind. The camp chairs fly away. The mosquitoes. The brine flies. And only a half-can of bug repellent.

And then there are the bison. The outdoorsy grrrls write:

While on the island, we did more than camp. We drove almost the length of the island and found herds of bison. We were about seven feet away from one of them on our drive. Maggie was fascinated and wanted to get closer. Roxana was terrified and drove by at about 2 m.p.h.

Note to Maggie, for next time you visit the island (and if you go to Yellowstone National Park, too): More people die or are injured by getting too close to bison than are injured by bears in the outdoors. Bison are big. They are fast. They are seriously unpredictable. They are a cut above your average dumb cow. I'd advise against trying to pet one.

*Above: Husband and I, on bicycles in Yellowstone on April 20, 2008. Like Maggie and Roxana, we, too, were about seven feet from the herd. Except we knew what we were dealing with. The following scene was of us, picking up our bikes and carrying them s-l-o-o-o-w-l-y through hip-deep snow off the road and around the herd to avoid riling the beasts. (Holly Mullen)

Just Get Her the Whips and Chains

[Dumb-ass Diatribe] Today's best letter to the editor. This is a joke, right? (Holly Mullen)

Me and My Beau

[Headline-ese] For some reason, this Salt Lake Tribune headline seems a bit, uh, light.

An (alleged) sociopath who (allegedly) asphyxiated his former girlfriend and (allegedly) stuffed her body in a crate inside the trunk of her car and (allegedly) kidnapped a 60-year-old mentally impaired woman in the process gets off being called an "ex-beau?"

Beau. I picture a guy in top hat, tails and spats. Someone who's all Fred Astaire, hoofing his way into Ginger Rogers' heart. Or what my Grandma Rose would have called a dandy. (Holly Mullen)

Oooh, So Salacious

[Media] Oh, how I love to see the words "salacious," "Mayor Ralph Becker" and City Weekly all together in one letter to the editor.

And a tip of the Salt Blog hat to Salt Lake City letter writer Meredith Shaw, who clearly has adopted the Utah art form of passive-aggressive communication. Is she handing our paper a compliment? A criticism? Both at once? Who knows. The nature of too much discourse in Utah is that you never quite know where a person is coming from.

Oh well. Any pub is good pub.

Anyway, here at our little paper we'll continue to keep an eye on the Becker administration. We figure the new mayor, with nearly four months of work under his belt has long passed the obligatory Honeymoon Period. If press scrutiny of elected officials counts as "even salacious," we're guilty as charged.

BTW, no one does salacious better than competing New York tabloids the Daily News and New York Post, top right. Now those are headlines! (Holly Mullen)

Want Me Back?

[Vox Populi] Today's top letter to the editor...[Holly Mullen]

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)