By Connie Coyne
The battle between the Jensen family the Utahns whose son has been diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer and the state of Utah has been a highlight of The Salt Lake Tribune front page for more than a week, and some readers wonder why it keeps grabbing such important journalistic space.
One Sandy couple sent an e-mail that hits all the points readers have made:
“Please put us down as two people who think the Jensen story has been way overplayed by The Tribune. When I glimpsed a huge above-the-fold banner this morning, I figured the U.S. had declared war [again] or something.
“Instead, the first time we get a large front-page banner in I don’t know how long, and it’s the Jensens again. Enough is enough. Utah section please, with a banner that doesn’t suggest a meteor is about to engulf the state in flames.”
Those kinds of complaints, coupled with another steady stream of complaints about the fact that local news gets on the front page at all, are the fodder for today’s discussion.
First, despite the belief by some readers that it should be, The Tribune is NOT The New York Times. There are differences between the two papers that should be noted:
*The Times is a national newspaper with a circulation over a million, stringers across the globe and their own foreign correspondents to file news from across the world. The Tribune is a medium-size daily newspaper that circulates in Utah. This newspaper’s medium-size staff (with the exception of Chris Smith, our Washington staff member) is located in Utah, covering events, people, trends and lifestyles of Utahns.
*Although world news is important, the news that affects most the lives of Utahns takes place in this state. What the city council or the county commission does as well as what the Utah Legislature does during its annual session(s) impacts what you earn, what you can buy in the liquor stores, what your state and local taxes are, how fast you can drive down your own street and how much you pay for stuff at the drug or grocery store. Their decisions define how clean your air will be, how many traffic lights will impede your commute to work and how much you will pay for cable TV.
*Although national news is important, local and state news still has more impact, so see above.
*Although we do not always say so in ongoing stories, editors have reasons for putting local stories on the front page. In the case of the Jensens, there are overriding reasons the story keeps ending up out there: Potentially it could become a Supreme Court case pitting parents’ rights against the interest of the state as outlined in the Utah Code in watching out for the welfare of children; and, it could be the catalyst for changing state law.
This business of parents’ rights is one that causes much contention in this state. Conservative Republicans have been trying to get stronger parental rights legislation passed in Utah for the past 10 years at least. As of Friday, at least two Utah legislators had pledged to change the law. Rep. Mike Thompson, R-Orem, said: “We do have a plan, a plan given to us by the Lord, and that plan is where the parents take care of their children.”
The Lord does not talk to me in my garage. He expects me to use my brain and my secular and spiritual education to figure these problems out myself. But I need the information I get from news stories in The Trib to do the figuring. Sometimes even I see stories in the newspaper that I don’t want to read, but I know I should read. It’s like eating those dark green vegetables when you are young: They may not taste great to the young palate, but the immune system appreciates them.
So, if you want a newspaper to give you the information you need to figure out who is doing what to whom in the state of Utah, then continue to subscribe. (After all, we buy The New York Times news service, so you are getting the best of their world/national stuff, too.) But, remember, if you change subscriptions to The Times, you will miss out on much of the news in Utah.
The Reader Advocate’s phone number is 801-257-8782. Write to the Reader Advocate, The Salt Lake Tribune, P.O. Box 867, Salt Lake City, Utah 84110. reader.advocate@sltrib.com
scoreboard:
Number of readers who believe they are getting enough world and national news in the Tribune 25
Number of readers who do not want any local news on the front page 16
Number of readers who wonder how why the Jensen family is on the front page so much 59
Number of readers who like the newspaper’s weekly TV supplement 28
