This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2010, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
There is no shortage of opinions about what happened Tuesday at the Deseret News.
What happened is that 85 full- and part-time staffers were told they were losing their jobs, that those still employed were moving from their off-Main office building to the Triad Center to combine forces with KSL TV and radio, and that the paper would take advantage of new media and new resources (like unpaid contributors who write just for the love of seeing their names in print).
Josh Loftin at the Salt Lake City Weekly, a former D-News reporter who reported the rumors of layoffs weeks ago, delivered an angry screed against the heartless way the employees were given the news. "Those who were fired immediately were told to pack their stuff and turn in their computers, all under the watchful eye of muscle-bound goons with headsets," Loftin wrote.
Ken Doctor, the new-media consultant who wrote the book Newsonomics, writes on his blog of the same name that the D-News' radical shakeup is the greatest thing since temple mints.
Doctor says the paper "pulled together many of the innovations of the day in the news business and redefined the company, its workforce and its products in one sweeping move." Doctor pointed out the D-News' use of many groundbreaking trends in newspapering: Partnering with a TV station, stressing its national religious focus (a la The Christian Science Monitor), getting high-profile names to contribute for free (example: Vai Sikehema's BYU sports blog), and relying on "citizen journalism" (free content).
On the digital-economics site PaidContent.org, Staci D. Kramer analyzed the D-News' announcement and found it lacking in details about the paper's online future. "CEO Clark Gilbert missed just about every opportunity to show his new organization in a cross-platform light," Kramer wrote.