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At the nonprofit Salt Lake Tribune, a turnaround and now a big gamble

Poynter · Rick Edmonds · last updated

Even by the tumultuous standards of the newspaper industry, The Salt Lake Tribune has turned in a perils-of-Pauline decade. Paul Huntsman and his wealthy Utah family rescued the paper, buying it in 2016 at a time of great financial stress. Punishing operating losses continued, and Huntsman covered them, sometimes from his own pocket.

Before long, he had decided the Tribune should morph from for-profit to nonprofit status — to meet his family’s goals of keeping an independent voice in the market, with profits secondary if they could be achieved.

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