The Salt Lake Tribune drops its paywall

This whole move truly is about moving from a transactional relationship to an actual relationship with our readers.”

Danyelle White, chief of content, The Salt Lake Tribune

A commonly held belief in news circles is paywalls are necessary to support digital journalism, especially for newspapers looking to shift paying subscribers online. But what if that’s not the case? 

The Salt Lake Tribune, which has existed as a subscription product since 1871, is bucking that trend. After four years of planning, two years of talking about it publicly, and some last-minute technical issues, in May, the Tribune officially removed its paywall and made all of its new content available for free, no subscription needed. 

Danyelle White, the Tribune’s chief of content, said the move stems from listening to readers and members of the community, who repeatedly asked why the news organization continued to have a paywall despite becoming a nonprofit in 2019. It was also somewhat confusing to ask readers to pay for a subscription while simultaneously asking for tax-deductible donations. 

“That answer became less and less defensible as we were asking people to donate, as we were building up our donor development function,” White said. “But the answer, of course, was revenue. We had played the subscription game for 150 years and a lot of our revenue was tied up in that.” 

It’s quite a leap of faith to shed the paywall. Last year, the Tribune reported digital subscription revenue of about $2.6 million from 32,000 digital subscribers. In theory, that number zeroes out, which would be a big hole to fill, representing about 19% of their total projected revenue of $13.57 million in 2025. 

So, how will they bridge that gap? For starters, White said the Tribune expects upwards of 75% of digital subscribers to remain as paying donors at their same level. That’s based on a 2024 experiment they ran with a group of digital subscribers who were given a free digital membership for three years; 87% decided to continue their payments as a donation to the paper rather than opt out entirely. 

The Tribune also received a $1 million pledge from board member Chris Gibson and his wife, Summer, to help support the transition away from a paywall. Thanks to matching funds and other donations from the community, the Tribune has already earned enough to cover that $2.6 million for the rest of the year. 

“The community showed up,” White said. 

The Tribune is offering some carrots to new members, including tote bags and swag commonly associated with public radio drives. The basic tier ($60 a year) also includes access to members-only events, while a sustaining membership ($120 a year) includes access to e-editions of the paper and the ability to comment on articles. Readers who want to continue receiving the print edition two days a week are asked to donate $312 a year, though the $150 print subscription portion isn’t tax deductible. 

“This whole move truly is about moving from a transactional relationship to an actual relationship with our readers,” White said.

Technically, there will still be a paywall of sorts for content older than 30 days, which will only be accessible to members. Everything else on the Tribune’s website is free to readers in Utah and across the country. 

The move wasn’t universally endorsed at first, both in and out of the Tribune (“We were told we were crazy, we were told if it’s not broke, don’t fix it,” White recalled). But White and two other executives — CEO/Executive Editor Lauren Gustus and Chief Development Officer Ciel Hunter — pledged they weren’t going to “play defense” when they all saw the writing on the wall regarding digital subscription sales. Readers hate paywalls, sales at the Tribune and elsewhere are showing signs of plateauing or keeping up with churn, and just 17% of Americans recently told Pew they pay for news. 

White thinks the move will ultimately benefit their bottom line. For instance, reader revenue is often capped by the cost of a subscription, increasing only when the price goes up (along with the anger of paying readers). Members tend to have more buy-in, and White said so far, they’ve seen more donations and an increase in the average donation amount. 

There’s also the hope the move will increase readership on the website and digital advertising sales. The Tribune now has a development team to court new grants with a pitch to keep news free for Utahns and readers across the region. 

Naturally, other news organizations are interested in learning from the Tribune, and White said she’s willing to talk to anyone. Last summer, leaders from the LNP Media Group in Lancaster traveled to Salt Lake to discuss how to operate as a nonprofit. They also traveled to Washington to help guide leaders at The Spokesman-Review, which began its shift to a nonprofit last month. 

“There’s no quick fix,” White said. “It requires a whole organizational mindset shift, strategic shift and lots of planning.”

Avoiding the search apocalypse 

While the Tribune is optimistic about the shift on several fronts, White doesn’t expect removing the paywall will help improve search results or traffic. But that’s okay, because the Tribune has managed to avoid the so-called “search apocalypse” kneecapping newsrooms across the globe. 

Thanks to shifting Google algorithms and the increased use of AI overview at the top of search results, traditional search traffic to news organizations had dropped about 25% over the past two years, according to data from NewsDash. That varies widely across the industry, with some publishers reporting drops of 40% or more. And Discover has been hit or miss for newsrooms, due to its randomness. 

While most other newsrooms have suffered, White said search traffic at the Tribune has actually increased about 20% since last year, allowing it to compete traffic-wise with outlets serving much larger markets, including ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. 

How? White credits an arduous and at times difficult shift away from being the so-called “paper of record” toward delivering coverage and content audiences were engaging with, informed by metrics and a “ruthless analysis” of what stories work. That includes broad use of a Slack channel where journalists brainstorm headlines for stories and a newsroom-wide focus on best SEO practices.

“There was a lot of internal angst we had to work through,” White said. 

Instead of focusing on pageviews, which can be skewed by a big Google Discover hit or a viral social media post, the Tribune’s north star metric is something most newsrooms ignore — average median page view.

“Average and median sound contradictory, but it's a hard number to move deliberately,” White said. “It is pretty immune to virality, so it’s a really good metric to say story by story, week by week, month by month, are our stories reaching more people? Yes or no?” 

Shedding the obligatory stories few people were reading freed the Tribune to focus on work resonating with readers while leaving room for experimentation, such as covering stories in underserved communities or branching out into new areas of coverage. As a result, the Tribune grew its average median page views by 10% last year, and White said the goal is to increase it another 10% this year. 

White also credits a strategy to shift away from small crime stories and weather (dominated locally by the Deseret Times) to a focus on explanatory and investigative journalism, which are hard for Google or other AI-powered search engines to sum up for readers. 

“We try to be unblurbable, for lack of a better word,” White said. “We don't want things to be easily synopsized. … And so far, those stories have been harder for AI to steal, scrape, synopsize, or whatever word you want to use.” 

Rob Tornoe is a cartoonist and columnist for Editor and Publisher, where he writes about trends in digital media. He is also a digital editor and writer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. You can reach him at robtornoe@gmail.com.