The Salt Lake Tribune, profitable and growing, seeks to rid itself of that “necessary evil” — the paywall

It started when Andy Larsen, sports reporter and data columnist for The Salt Lake Tribune, got annoyed with an “obnoxious” ad on the Tribune’s own site. He brought his frustration about the digital clutter to someone else who happened to be working late in the newsroom — chief development officer Ciel Hunter.

“I asked her: ‘Hey, how much money do we make on this? Is it really worth it?'” Larsen said. “That led into a conversation about how much we make from digital ad revenue overall, when compared to sponsorships and donations, which then led to talks on everything else. I was pretty floored and impressed with her transparency on everything over the course of the next couple of hours, which then led me to ask about making those same numbers public, and if I could help with the project.”

That’s how Larsen ended up writing an annual report that gives the public — including nosy newshounds like you and me — a look at the inner workings of the first legacy newspaper in the U.S. to become a nonprofit.

Larsen said he was given access to “internal financials and metrics of every kind,” from subscription figures to the CEO’s credit card statements. (The Tribune’s executive editor Lauren Gustus was tapped to serve as the company’s first-ever chief executive officer in June.) He also interviewed Gustus, Hunter, and director of finance Doug Ryle about the company’s finances and future plans. The result is refreshingly readable and transparent.

This public-facing report is a first for the 153-year-old Salt Lake Tribune, which took inspiration from Defector and The Texas Tribune. It imagines an audience that includes subscribers, local residents, potential donors, news industry followers, and — as its origin story suggests — at least some of the Tribune’s own employees. News organizations have historically sought to maintain a strict separation between business and editorial operations to protect newsroom independence, and it’s been said — maybe not unfairly — that journalists don’t know much about the business of news. There are signs that is changing, however, and reporters have not failed to notice that more than two-thirds of newspaper jobs have vanished since 2005 or that local news outlets have been hit particularly hard. We’ve seen news organizations open communication that gives journalists a better idea of what, exactly, needs to happen for their publication to survive and thrive — and where they fit in.

“A firewall between business and editorial is essential for the integrity of the product, IMO,” Larsen said. “On the other hand, that firewall can also be limiting when it comes to belief between the two groups — frankly, I think some of our own writers, including myself, had just assumed that our business was in worse shape than it was, just based on us operating in the newspaper biz in 2024. One way to get the information out to staff without breaking that firewall was just publishing everything to everyone.”

Larsen said some expenditures stood out to him but that, mostly, he was happily surprised with what he found poking around his employer’s finances. “Honestly, that we were seeking donations to specifically address my biggest Tribune if-I-was-czar wants — a better website, free to all — brought me joy,” Larsen told me. (More on The Tribune’s ongoing efforts to drop its paywall below.)

Larsen also takes time to address some common misconceptions and criticisms he encounters as a Tribune reporter, including readers who believe Paul Huntsman runs the paper (Huntsman, who rescued the paper from hedge fund ownership eight years ago, stepped down as board chair in February) or assume the Tribune is failing financially.

Gustus said feedback from readers has been “really positive” and that The Tribune is already planning to release a similar report next year.

“People in Utah appreciate knowing how we’re doing,” Gustus said. “This is understandable, both because everyone thinks local news is on the rocks and here in Utah it’s the Tribune that can publish stories nobody else does.”

The Salt Lake Tribune is profitable…and slowly growing its newsroom

Let’s start with the bottom line, shall we? The Salt Lake Tribune made $15.3 million last year for a net revenue of $779,000. The nonprofit newspaper makes most of its money from donors ($3.3 million in 2023), subscribers (about $5 million), and advertising ($5.2 million).

About a third of the donation revenue comes from individuals. The vast majority (87%) of individual donors give tax-deductive gifts of $100 or less, but the Tribune has grown its First Amendment Society (more than $1,000/year) to 136 members. The names of donors giving more than $5,000 is publicly available on the site.

The Tribune expects revenue and expenses to dip in 2024 after chief revenue officer Chris Stegman departed the Tribune in May and brought several Tribune advertising employees with him. Executive editor Gustus praised Stegman for helping turn the Tribune toward financial sustainability but said the change has allowed the newspaper to reorganize its business-side operations to better reflect the nonprofit mission, including moving philanthropy and advertising into the same division, and reduce expenses.

Of the 85 people who work for The Salt Lake Tribune, 60 are involved in making the various news products every day. The median salary for those news staffers (journalists, photographers, editors, etc.) is $66,539. The newspaper has not made layoffs — which Larsen describes as “damaging to the soul of the Tribune” — since 2018 and has grown the newsroom by 10%.

In July, staff at The Salt Lake Tribune announced their intention to form a union — including, as he disclosed in the annual report, Larsen himself. The newspaper’s management voluntarily recognized the Salt Lake News Guild four days later.

Only about a third of local residents know The Tribune is now a nonprofit

The Salt Lake Tribune surveyed residents in six local Utah counties about their news habits and the Tribune, specifically. They found only 32% of people knew the Tribune was operating as a nonprofit.

“Now, if you’re the kind of person who reads newspaper annual reports,” Larsen writes, “you’re probably one of those 32%…but y’all should tell your friends.”

Strong coverage of the Church of Latter-day Saints has generated subscriptions

The Salt Lake Tribune has two dedicated religion reporters, Peggy Fletcher Stack and Tamarra Kemsley. Something like 42% to 60% of Utah residents are Mormon (the exact percentage is something of a debate). Larsen writes that though “some people complain about the amount of coverage,” covering the topic thoroughly makes sense for the newspaper. For one? Stories about Latter-day Saints and their church are “frequently our most successful at generating subscribers.”

“From my perspective, the church is perhaps the most powerful institution in the state, and it is critical for us, as an independent outlet, to cover all aspects of its impact,” Larsen wrote.

Digital revenue will surpass still-“significant” print revenue for the first time this year

The paper edition (now printed twice a week) of The Salt Lake Tribune has 9,165 subscribers — down from 36,000 print subscribers when the Tribune ended its 149-year run as a daily paper back in 2020 and 200,000 subscribers at its peak.

As of early June 2024, The Salt Lake Tribune also has 30,362 digital subscribers. Digital access costs $8 for the first three months and $8 per month after that. Still, revenue is “nearly evenly split” between the Tribune’s print and digital products.

The newspaper anticipates digital subscription revenue will edge out print revenue for the first time in 2024.

A new goal: Ridding itself of that “necessary evil” known as the paywall

Executive editor and CEO Lauren Gustus confirmed The Salt Lake Tribune only made the decision to drop the paywall on “as much journalism as possible” over the last year.

“When we first became a nonprofit, we spent a lot of time focused on board governance and IRS compliance and such,” Gustus explained. (The Tribune made lessons learned from its nonprofit transition publicly available in a free playbook.) “It took us more time to figure out how the journalism would change.”

Through efforts like outreach to readers and nonreaders alike as well as founding the Utah News Collaborative and Great Salt Lake Collaborative, Gustus said it’s become clear to the Tribune “that reaching as many people as possible with trusted and relevant news and information was critical to Utah’s future.”

In the annual report, Larsen explained that the news organization still has a ways to go:

To be sure, requiring people to subscribe to read more than three stories a month has been a necessary evil, in that the income it has generated has paid our reporters’ salaries and kept The Tribune afloat. There’s no doubt, though, that it has also limited some number of people from reading our journalism.

Our goal is, at some point in the years to come, to remove that paywall. To allow all, regardless of their ability to pay, to read more Tribune journalism.

It’s a push we’ve started to make this year. We’ve raised $340,000 and counting to fully remove the paywall on all of our election coverage ahead of the critical 2024 races. We’re not there yet from an income point of view to make our website free, but we hope to grow our donor base and income to the point that we’ll be able to open everything up to everyone.

Common and uncommon challenges

Despite its groundbreaking “first-of-its-kind” status, The Tribune’s annual report reflects challenges common to many local newspapers in the United States. Larsen reports that the Tribune has “cobbled together various third-party technical solutions” that don’t “all work together well” at times. The newsroom is looking for a new home because it’s been in “a way-too-expensive long-term lease that no longer reflects the post-pandemic real estate market we’re in now,” as Larsen puts it. The paper also reduced its wire services costs from $311,000 to $201,000 by transitioning from The Associated Press to one offered by The New York Times.

But, reading the annual report, I was struck by Larsen writing that “in a lot of ways…working at the Tribune feels like working at a startup.” It’s not something you often hear from reporters at legacy print publications.

“The Tribune is 154 years old. But we’ve been operating as a nonprofit for just four of them. For much of our history, we’ve had owners who paid the bills (in good times and bad) and ensured the paper would be published the next day. Now, we are supported by the community,” Gustus said, when asked about the “startup” characterization. “We get to figure out what success looks like and how to get there, with their help and with guidance from our board. But knowing it’s on you is liberating. And motivating. “