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News Blog

Open Container: D-News Exodus

by Josh Loftin

Posted // 2010-09-03 -

The Mormon Media Observer, Joel Campbell, leaves the Deseret News because of ethical conflicts. Senior political reporter Lee Davidson is also leaving.

Joel Campbell (pictured) is moving to the Salt Lake Tribune, effective immediately, because he does not consider the bold, new direction of the paper as journalism. Campbell also said he is not alone, and that there are some other reporters leaving the Deseret News for the same reasons.

The new gig for Campbell will be a part-time news column about open government and GRAMA laws. He will also stay employed full-time as a journalism professor at BYU.

Campbell said that he's been concerned for a while, but the deal breaker was a front-page story yesterday written by Michael Purdy, the head of the LDS Church's PR department.

"I'm very disappointed in the direction the Deseret News is going. It came to a head when the LDS Church PR was writing a front page story. It's an anathema to journalism," Campbell says.

Campbell was also very critical of the way the newspaper executives handled the layoffs on Tuesday. He said that burying the layoffs six or seven sentences deep in the news release was offensive to those being laid off, and having a PR firm handle the reporting of the news was against everything proper in journalism.

"In the real world, the news staff would have been doing their own story," Campbell says. "Instead, they tried to control the message, including sending me an e-mail telling me not to blog about it. That's what I did: I blogged about Mormon media."

Lee Davidson also confirmed that he was leaving the paper to go to the Tribune. Because he will likely get a Deseret News severance, he was not willing to say anything besides "today is my last day."

Davidson spent more than two decades in Washington, D.C. as the Deseret News correspondent. He has been back in Salt Lake City for about seven years, covering politics and, most recently, immigration. (In full disclosure, I was Davidson's editor for about two years at the Deseret News).

It's worth noting that both Campbell and Davidson are active members of the LDS Church. Additionally, Campbell has been the "Mormon Media Observer" for Mormon Times, and would defend the Deseret News as well as eye coverage of the LDS Church with a critical eye.

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REPLY TO THIS COMMENT

Tom Selleck

Posted // September 7,2010 at 20:29

Davidson got kicked out of the D-News for helping to bury the Kevin Garn Hot tubbin' story a few years ago. The fact came to light after Garn's victim threathened to publicly humiliate him again as she once did with Davidson and the D-News. The fact that he and Bernick buried the story embrassed a lot of the brass at the D-News.

Davidson is a hack "copy and paste" reporter at best. Sorry to see the Trib pick him up. Hopefully they will let him go sooner than later.

REPLY TO THIS COMMENT

Anon

Posted // September 7,2010 at 10:54

Davidson starts Monday at the Tribune.

REPLY TO THIS COMMENT

Anonymous

Posted // September 5,2010 at 00:56

So is Lee Davidson leaving due to ethical concerns or simply because he was one of the many that were laid off? Bundling the mention of his departure with the Joel Cambell thing makes it seem like he left for similar reasons, but you also mention that he's getting a severance package which implies that he was laid off.

If he was laid off, then I think it was wrong to prominently mention it in a story called "D-News Exodus".

Josh Loftin

Posted // September 6,2010 at 14:48 - They have been giving the packages to people who leave voluntarily, as well. Lee was not laid-off. I think it's safe to say that he is leaving because of these ethical concerns, although he cannot comment. Over the past few years, Lee has been one of the most vocal critics (especially inside the paper and to the bosses) of the paper's "More Mormon" push. He also is a very traditional journalist who was willing to speak critically, on the record, when the paper changes its dateline policy a few months ago.

REPLY TO THIS COMMENT

pohaku61

Posted // September 4,2010 at 14:26

Ethic and journalism in the same sentence... Give me a break !!!

REPLY TO THIS COMMENT

almiller

Posted // September 4,2010 at 12:17

Real journalism happens when the owner controls his assets instead of turning them over to a charity for fools that think that they can control the newspaper without putting anything at risk. There is no ethical problem with what the Deseret News and 100 other newspaper owners (e.g. Rupert Murdock) have done here. The ethics problem is trying to control the story while using someone else's assets.

I guess that journalism at BYU is like journalism everywhere else--boring.