Tag: Daily Herald

Categories
State

Newspaper Survival Tactics


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Some people who read what I have written about news media might think that I would like to see the demise of newspapers – they would be wrong. I do think that news organizations generally need to make some adjustments to better serve their purpose (am am assuming a purpose of informing their audience). As I read a story in the Deseret News about their growth I saw two happy bits of information that illustrate the kinds of changes that can help the industry to survive. (I take no position on the Deseret News specifically, it is just the example at hand.)

The first is that it is possible for multiple publications to compete and survive.

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 said by making news coverage "more Mormon" he means appealing to a market niche larger than Utah instead of just a circulation territory.

This shift in focus at the Deseret News suggests a possible approach that would allows competing papers to coexist within the same market. In some ways it is not the same market because The Tribune is catering to the geographic region while the Deseret News is catering to the dominant culture of the region – even outside the immediate vicinity of the paper. The evidence of this is in the statement that "[t]he Salt Lake Tribune still is profitable, and together with the Deseret News is expected to remain on the short list of two-newspaper towns."

The second piece of good news is that "[s]mall newspapers are generally holding their own because of unique demographics." This seems to validate things I have read suggesting that the quality of papers were falling as they tried to put more emphasis on non-local coverage. To me this would suggest, for example, that the Provo Daily Herald should have it’s "your town" coverage of outlying cities such as Lehi and Eagle Mountain replaced by local papers – possibly with a joint operating agreement between the various Utah County papers. I’ll bet that the Herald and the new local paper(s) would be better able to serve the population of Utah County than the current setup. (Similar to my previous disclaimer -this is nota  complaint against the Herald, but it should offer hope to any areas that feel underserved by it that there is an alternative path available.)

Categories
Local

Advocating a Utah Lake Bridge


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One of the things that is good about Editorial boards is that when they are right about something they usually do a good job of defining and defending their position and they have the power of the press at their disposal. (One of the problems is that they have all those advantages when they are wrong too.) A great example of that is the Daily Herald Editors putting the issue of a bridge over Utah Lake in perspective.

Local pressure groups are lining up to fight even thinking about the possibility of a bridge across Utah Lake. They might as well protest the heat of a Utah Valley summer. It’s inevitable that some kind of passage will be forged over the lake in coming years, and the most productive course would be to find the best feasible alternative that will serve the widest number of people.

When my close interest in the transportation issues of Utah County began, the idea of a lake bridge seemed like a distant possibility – something that might happen in 20 or 30 years if at all. Years of living there and following the issues easily have me convinced that the question of if a bridge should be built is short-sighted, the only real questions to answer are where, when, and how to do the job right.

No comprehensive plan to meet the growing transportation needs of Utah County can fail to include some route across the lake. Anyone who wants to delay or minimize a lake bridge had better approach their goal through community planning and business development in Cedar Valley. Only by lowering the overwhelming incentives to travel between that growing area and the established communities on the east side of the lake will allow for a more leisurely approach to designing the bridge that will still become necessary at some point in the future for economic and quality of life reasons.

One nice change in their rhetoric is that they no longer appear to lay the blame for this issue at the feet of Lehi City – like they did only 2 months ago.

Categories
Local

Re: Growth Will Force a Lake Bridge


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It must be nice to be paid to publish your opinions – especially when there is nobody to dispute your position. With the power of the press you get to proclaim who is right and who is wrong, and you get to make your living taking the time to make a considered opinion not only about the right answer to current issues, but also to the best way to sell that position without regard to the truth. Such an attitude appears to be the driving force behind the Editorial Board of the Provo Daily Herald (DHEB) as they criticize Lehi city for what they see as the inevitability of a bridge across Utah Lake.

Using little more than their own words and logic from that one editorial it is clear that they are using Lehi as a scapegoat on an issue that is uncomfortable but which has no real villain.

Based on their words, only 17% of wage earners in Cedar Valley will be heading north for work in 2040. Would those headed East be very excited to drive to 2100 N in Lehi to travel to Provo/Orem just because it is a full freeway instead of a 6 or 8 lane arterial road (which it will undoubtedly be by 2040)?

The DHEB argues that there are “a dozen east-west corridors of five to seven lanes each” in Salt Lake County and only two in Utah County. If we compare apples to apples then we must recognize that the “measly two-lane compromise that Lehi forced on Utah County” is actually a 4 lane road (two lanes each direction) and will likely be at least 6 lanes within 15 years. That’s respectable compared to the 5 – 7 lane roads in Salt Lake County they are comparing it to as well as the 6 or 8 lane freeway that it is replacing. In addition, this compromise should be built in under 5 years rather than the 2100 N freeway which would not even be started for nearly 10 years. This early increase in capacity should allow for Main Street in Lehi to receive a long overdue widening as well so we could have an extra 10 east/west lanes within 15 years (not counting the 4 lanes at 1000 S. in Lehi). Between main street, 2100 N, and 1000 S, Lehi will have at least 14 east-west lanes for travel on the west side of I-15 – you could hardly expect more form a single city.

Do I expect that 14 lanes would be able to handle the traffic from 1/4 Million people expected to be in Cedar Valley? No. The real limitation on east-west travel in the county is that we have a lake spanning most of our north-south distance between our east and west side communities – why should the DHEB blame that on Lehi? The only possible solutions to that problem are a bridge over the lake or else a reduction in the necessity of east-west travel. Even the DHEB wording that this “will only hasten the construction of an east-west bridge across Utah Lake” is a reminder that such a bridge is a matter of when more than if. Is there any extra environmental impact if it is built 5 years earlier rather than 5 years later?

I find it ironic that it is the Mayor of Lehi, and not the DHEB, that has been talking for years about the need for a Cedar Valley highway (that DHEB is now calling an inevitability) and a lake bridge.

Categories
National State

Fourth Seat for Utah


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The bill to give Utah a fourth seat in the House of Representatives has been hanging around for quite some time. It has not had too much coverage lately because very little has been happening with it. Yesterday I was surprised to see two editorials on the issue in Utah newspapers (Deseret News, Daily Herald). What really surprised me was that both editorials were against the bill. Back when this bill was getting more attention I was constantly disappointed that most of the coverage of the issue was supportive of the bill.

The reasons given for opposing the bill are that the other half of the legislation (giving Washington D.C. a voting member of the house) was unconstitutional. As the Deseret News pointed out, the goal of giving D.C. a voting member of the house is not without merit, but it is outside the scope of legislation. The proper way to accomplish this is to change the constitution, or make D.C. a state or part of a state. These are the same arguments I have been making on blog posts and comment boards ever since the issue was first raised. (Surprisingly, I discovered today that I have never talked about it here.)

The Deseret News offers one other reason to oppose the bill – timing. I have always argued that Utah should just wait until we get a new seat – we’re growing much faster than the country as a whole so we’ll gain new seats as the census gets updated. The editorial argues that the time is getting short enough now (only 3 years or less before we get new seats anyway) that Utah has nothing to gain by pushing legislation for a provisional seat in exchange for a (currently unconstitutional) permanent seat for D.C.