 A new era in the local news landscape is emerging in November 2019. The Salt Lake Tribune announced a historic IRS ruling allowing their newspaper to convert into a local news non-profit. With me is Paul Huntsman, publisher and owner of the Salt Lake Tribune. First of all, why was this decision made to convert? Why did you apply for this? Well, so I acquired the Salt Lake Tribune three years ago, realizing that there was not a sustainable business model for local newspapers going forward. They've been going through what I would consider a crisis for the last 10 to 15 years as a consumer transitions from a print to a digital product. And the industry itself really hasn't found the right pathway moving forward. Like a lot of challenges and problems here in America, most, if not all, solutions are found on the local level. So the stewardship and the ownership of the Salt Lake Tribune was owned by a hedge fund out of New York City. We wanted to bring that stewardship and responsibility back to the local community to help figure out and solve for the long-term solution for local journalism. So I spent the last three years talking to a lot of the thought leaders around the country, including the Lenfest Institute, the Knight Foundation here, the New York Times and others, and realized that the right pathway for our community was to transition to a non-profit and to be able to diversify and broaden the pools of revenue that we would have access to to help sustain local journalism. So were subscriptions on the way down or were you at a point looking at it as a business where it was not sustainable, you could see the writing on the wall five years out, ten years out, we are not going to have this paper if it goes the way that it's going? So I would argue that the consumption of local journalism is higher than it's ever been. If you look at the New York Times, I mean they have over five million subscribers, they have more subscribers now than they've ever had in the history of their newspaper. The real challenge is as you transition print subscribers, whereas you look at print dollars going to digital dimes, we as a local newspaper, I would argue that we have more consumption, more readers now, but the vast majority of those readers are not paying for the content. So how do you make up for that offset in revenue as you transition from print to digital? I just read a statistic recently that only four percent of our market actually consumes their news through a printed product, fifty percent. Four percent consume a printed product. And fifty percent go on to digital news sites to consume their news. Now this would include television, radio, this would consume all different. These are people in Salt Lake before consumers. So what's the big advantage if it's a non-profit, that means obviously I could continue to subscribe to the old-fashioned ways, or I could also donate to you? Does that mean that I would also get a subscription or no? That's right. So if you look at the old business model, you primarily derive your revenue from digital subscription, from either print or digital subscription as well as print or digital advertising. As you begin to factor out a print not being a factor there, digital subscriptions and digital revenue will not be able to equate to what you were getting from the print. So you can ask yourself the question, are you going to downsize through a glorified blog or are you going to be able to support the journalists that you need in the community to continue to have good watchdog impactful journalism? So I really look at what I like to term as the third leg of the stool. If you have digital subscriptions, digital advertising as philanthropy, whether that's in the form of additional membership or large endowment contributions or estate planning contributions, local newspapers or the work that's done by local newspapers are so critical for our local communities as we advance forward in terms of informing and empowering our citizenry with information so that we can make the best decisions as a community to move forward. And so that narrative has obviously resonated very well with our community. Our community has begun to step up and to get behind our endeavors to support it from a philanthropic standpoint. So yeah, give me an idea. This has been going really just a few months now. You got officially this designation last fall. We're just in the first stages of it. What are you hoping for? Let's say if we have this conversation a year from now or five years from now, what do you think that mix is going to be? 30% philanthropic, 30% revenue subscription or how does it play out? So I still think that the digital only model, again, we still have a print product and I don't want to announce some more transition out of the print, but like all individuals in business, you always have to look around the corner and I really don't see that five to 10 years from now that we're going to have a printed product. So as you look at really what the digital model is going forward to sustain local journalism, I would hope that we can get at least half to two thirds of the revenue from our digital products themselves. And then 30 to 40% that we would offset or make of that difference through philanthropy. Now whether or not that number goes to 50 or whether that's down to 10%, I hope that it's closer to 10% longer term. But I really see that philanthropy in some form or fashion is going to have to make up the difference. We've also established the Utah Journalism Foundation, which will be in a down that will be part of our long term solution. So if we look at major gifts that would go into the foundation, longer term as we built that up and as I get scale, the interest coming off that foundation, I really see as filling in and supporting that portion that will help offset the additional support that we need. So until that time, the family or the ownership is basically subsidizing this. And what do you have as a goal, as a benchmark to say, okay, let's do this for five years. Let's give this a run and see if we can get this mixed right. So I've said a goal of, I'd like to raise $60 million over the next five years. I'm almost one third to that goal already. And so that's part of my responsibility as we have made this transition. And the community has, you know, they want to be part of solving this. This isn't an individual effort. In the past, yes, I personally have been part of subsidizing and helping to maintain a news room that is impactful and that can continue to provide strong watchdog journalism. And so yeah, it's been difficult for one individual to kind of carry that burden. But I realize that we had to get to this point to where we were in fact, you know, granted a nonprofit status so I can go out and broaden the base of philanthropic support. All right. Good luck. Paul Huntsman from Salt Lake Tribune. Thanks so much. Thank you very much.