The Mormon Church helped slash a rival paper's revenue nearly in half, in a deal negotiated in secret.
Jess and Hannah trace a 180-year fight over who controls the news in Mormon Utah: Joseph Smith ordering the Nauvoo Expositor's press destroyed, the founding of the church-owned Deseret News, the Mountain Meadows Massacre and John D. Lee's execution, the Salt Lake Tribune's Pulitzer-winning BYU Honor Code investigation, and the 2013 deal that slashed the Tribune's revenue share from 58 percent to 30 percent overnight. It's a story about institutional power, media control, and what it costs to keep telling the truth anyway. Sometimes pressure doesn't look like a headline — it looks like a renegotiated contract nobody outside the industry ever hears about.
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