The Press: The Peacemaker

In 1910, when a starched and proper young Irishman named John Francis Fitzpatrick arrived in Salt Lake City, capital of predominantly Mormon Utah, he found a mud-flinging contest going on between Salt Lake City’s morning paper, the Gentile* Tribune, and the Saints’ own evening Deseret News.

Young Fitzpatrick, who went about his business as a newly hired railroad clerk, did not know it at the time, but the mudfight had been going on spiritedly for 40 years. The Tribune, established in 1870 by bitter Mormon dissidents, was winning; its virulent assaults on church practices and its vicious lampoons of Mormon leaders attracted even church members, who sneaked copies on the sly. The Deseret News, founded in 1850 by Brigham Young himself, was staggering beneath the burden of must-run church news and saintly strictures that were its daily lot.

Declaration of War. The young Roman Catholic Irishman was destined to play a significant role in Utah journalism. From railroad clerking, John Francis Fitzpatrick went on to be secretary to another Irishman, Thomas Kearns, former U.S. Senator from Utah (1901-05) and millionaire silver miner. With a share of his fortune, Kearns bought the Tribune in 1913. After his death, Kearns’s heirs named John Francis Fitzpatrick publisher of the Tribune.

John Francis Fitzpatrick set out to turn himself into a newspaperman and the Tribune into a newspaper. While the Deseret News looked on enviously, the Tribune set up elaborate regional coverage in Utah and Idaho, soon was serving an area bigger than all New England. He introduced fair and comprehensive news coverage to fill the space once heavily committed to fulminations against the church. When the Saints came marching in to Salt Lake City for their semi-annual “conference,” the Tribune staffed the story generously and played it straight.

By such good newspapering, the Tribune’s circulation increased by 1947 to 87,237, while the Deseret News’s fell to 40,485. The church decided to give battle. Drawing on its considerable financial resources—which still include a department store, a sugar mill, and the city’s largest hotel—the church declared war on the Tribune.

Time for a Truce. For the first time in decades, Mormon bishops went around warning backsliders in their flocks—i.e., Tribune subscribers—to change their ways. The Deseret News invaded the Sunday field, which until then had been a Tribune monopoly. Going desperately after circulation, the Deseret News pushed steak knives and other gimcrack prizes on would-be subscribers. The Tribune fought back with its own prize contests, but could not afford the competition. The Deseret News moved out front.

This, too, might have gone on forever if it had not been for John Francis Fitzpatrick. Here and there, in all the right places, he dropped hints on how to end the hostilities. When these filtered up to the Mormon high councils, the elders, already weary of the expensive battle, gave them a cordial reception. In 1952, largely on John Francis Fitzpatrick’s terms, the war ended in a truce.

The Deseret News got out of the Sunday field. The Tribune, which in 1930 had bought the News’s afternoon rival, the Telegram, now sold it to the News (which became the Deseret News and Salt Lake Telegram). Then the once-bitter rivals joined hands by forming the Newspaper Agency Corp., through which both papers share the same printing plant and the same advertising, circulation and distribution organizations. They remain rivals—and staunch rivals—only editorially. President of the combined operation: John Francis Fitzpatrick.

Last week, after watching both papers prosper, and the Tribune and the News become almost even in circulation and quality, John Francis Fitzpatrick died of a heart attack at 73. With characteristic foresight, he had decided years ago on his successor: John W. Gallivan, 45. On Fitzpatrick’s death the Tribune, in open defiance of the old man’s longstanding order, ran his picture on Page One, thereby providing many subscribers with their first glimpse of the ungregarious Irishman who had greatly altered and immeasurably improved Utah’s journalistic landscape.

* In Utah, all non-Mormons are called Gentiles. The first Gentile Governor (1917-21) of Utah was Simon Bamberger, a Jew.