Judge Clears Way For MediaNews In Salt Lake

By: Paul Foy, AP Business Writer (AP) After months of legal wrangling, The Salt Lake Tribune, formed by Mormon dissidents more than a century ago, will soon be in the hands of a company that appears hand-picked by its church-owned rival.

The Tribune, Utah's largest newspaper, was to be taken over Thursday by Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc., which bought the paper 19 months ago but has been unable to take control because of a complex contract with its longtime executives. MediaNews Group owns The Denver Post and 48 other daily papers.

On Tuesday, an appeals court rejected a request from the newspaper's former owners to keep control of the publication.

The prospect of the Tribune being taken away from the Kearns-McCarthey family, which has owned it for more than a century, has sent a shudder through Salt Lake City, the headquarters of the Mormon church. The paper has long been considered a counterweight to the church's influence.

The Deseret News, the Tribune's church-owned afternoon rival, shares a printing plant, advertising and distribution. That joint operating agreement appears to have given the News the chance to pick its partner. The McCartheys are trying to repurchase the paper; the News is blocking them.

"In Utah there's this saliva test: Are you a Tribune reader or a Deseret News reader?" said Brigham Young University journalism professor Alf Pratte.

It's part of a larger debate over the influence wielded by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he said. "If it's not the newspapers, it will be the issue of drinking or abortion," he said.

The Tribune was founded by Mormon dissidents in 1871 and nurtured after 1901 by silver magnate Sen. Thomas Kearns. Four generations of Kearns descendants have run the newspaper ever since, including the McCarthey family, which traces its line to the senator's daughter.

Phil McCarthey, a longtime Tribune director, promises to exercise a disputed option to buy the paper on Thursday. That could take months to resolve, but managers must give up control as they continue their legal fight.

McCarthey says MediaNews President Dean Singleton made an unholy alliance with the Mormon church to silence a critic.

Memos from court files lay out Singleton's promises to "not disparage the church," to help the Deseret News switch to morning publication, and to make the junior paper a more equal partner in the joint newspaper agency.

Last year the Tribune's weekday circulation was about 135,000; the News' was about 67,200.

Singleton calls the charge nonsense. "We view this as business people," Singleton said. "They view this as a generations war against the Mormon church."

The McCartheys and other owners sold the paper in 1997. By then, an early cable television investment the Tribune's owners made had increased 10,000-fold, to $500 million, and some of the Tribune's 200 shareholders wanted to cash out.

Instead of spinning the Tribune from its valuable Tele-Communications Inc. investment, directors OK'd a merger of the Tribune and TCI, keeping editorial control with an option to buy back the newspaper.

Court documents show TCI began to shop the Tribune almost before the ink could dry on its promise to return the paper to the McCartheys after five years. The McCartheys' hopes dimmed after AT&T Corp. bought TCI in 1999 and inherited the Tribune, an asset it didn't want.

AT&T sold the Tribune to MediaNews for $200 million in January 2001.

"I don't blame Mr. Singleton. He's a businessman; he saw a hole and jumped in," said Dominic Welch, 69, who was preparing to retire as publisher until Singleton offered him a job as a consultant and a seat on the editorial board. "I blame the church."