Pour one out for the old-guard journalists whose stories tend not to be told by billionaire media owners. 

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Last Friday night, a tidy group of local newspaper professionals gathered at Junior's Tavern in Salt Lake City to pay tribute to Lance Gudmundsen, an old-timey news veteran who recently passed away.

Why they invited such an unprofessional sort as myself is a mystery. However, I did know Lance, as he was still doing copy edits on City Weekly stories right up to the very end at the spry age of just 84 years old. There goes the myth that City Weekly is home to just millennial socialists.

Gudmundsen was indeed loved by many, so it was with appropriate awe that among those paying him tribute in person—or via a "fond memory" remembrance published in City Weekly a couple of weeks ago—were a good number of his former associates at The Salt Lake Tribune. After retiring from a 30-plus-year career at the Trib, Gudmundsen took a seat with us, and we are all glad to have known him.

He was a pro. He was as good at righting the wrong prose as anyone. He had a nice sense of self and a silent, killer sense of humor. The last time I saw him was at our City Weekly Best of Utah party in early December. And yes, he had upon him his smile, his big round eyeglasses and a marvelous bow tie.

One never knows when it will be the last time you see someone. Nor can one predict what may come upon a person's passing. So, it was with just a bit of surprise when Terry Orme entered Junior's, approached me and said he was happy to meet me.

Actually, I was more like, "Oh shit, this guy probably hates me." After all, Orme had been at the Tribune for decades, took a few of our barbs and, right there, caused me immediate regret that we had not met sooner. The friendly guy in front of me with a shot of Patrón—who had risen the ladder from copy boy to movie critic to the top rung of editor and publisher of the Tribune—I remembered, deserved better than when he was fired by Paul Huntsman, who just two months prior acquired the Tribune from the hedge fund monster Alden Global Capital.

A Tribune reporter once told me that Orme was the unsung hero of the newspaper's survival—he was sitting in the captain's seat during the most turbulent phase of Tribune history that included hedge fund ownership, mass layoffs and, somehow despite all that, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. It was Orme, the reporter said, who really saved the Tribune, adding that Orme was one of the staff, not above the staff. Orme's story was never really told.

In a Tribune column last week, Paul Huntsman announced that he is stepping aside from his duties at the 501(c)3 nonprofit that oversees the financial well-being of The Salt Lake Tribune. As his column mentioned more than once (by using the personal pronouns "I" or "me" about 20 times), Huntsman basically established that he sits at the right hand of God when it comes to being the savior of the media formerly known as newspapers.

It's heady stuff. Read his column—not just for the history but for the chance to see why billionaires buy newspapers: They lend the perfect opportunity to write your own obituary. Who wouldn't want to do that?

There was too much backslapping in his paean to self for my liking, but it does remain true that Huntsman has for now ensured the survival of the Tribune brand. It can be fairly argued that while the brand lives on, the Tribune's impact on our community has waned. Does anyone really believe that any Republican legislator or our governor fears or gives value to what the Tribune says these days?

If they did, Utahns might be witness to softened anti-gay, transgender or DEI legislation. Utah might have gotten an honest redistricting map. Huntsman's credit is not for moving the public opinion needle, but that he pioneered the transition from a privately held newspaper, through the crushing hedge-fund era and into what some corners hail as a possible salvation for local media: non-profit ownership.

Maybe that's true for some media, but not so much for City Weekly. We also have had a side 501(c)3 journalism mission nonprofit since 2016. It took us well over a year to have our nonprofit application approved. When the Tribune got theirs in 2019, it took about five minutes, likely the result of what Huntsman wrote in his piece last week, that he hired "the best law firm in Washington, D.C." to move the ownership conversion process along. Money talks. Sort of.

What no one speaks of regarding nonprofit board oversight of a newspaper is that a newspaper goes from one master to many. It's not unfair to predict that certain board members will always position their interests above that of a greater good. That's how corporate America works.

A smart director will comprise the board with persons who are equally loyal to that precise mission. Think of Donald J. Trump, who has been doing the same for years, surrounding himself with loyal surrogates and paying his top echelon operators big bucks to maintain his status quo.

That's merely an example, not a pronounced media model, but the point is the same, the Tribune operates similarly. As that happens internally, external subscriptions that are a subset of total revenues create a populace that only wants to hear one side of the argument—that's why they subscribe, same as to your favorite nasty cable news channel. Soon enough that news organization becomes its own echo chamber (see above per waning influence).

So, cheers to you, Lance. I'll miss you at the bar. And cheers to you, Terry. If you ever have 955 words to spit out, we can put them all right here.

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