The Salt Lake Tribune Archive 

In 1871, three ex-communicated members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints launched the daily Salt Lake Tribune. The first daily edition appeared on April 15, announcing that the new publication would "be a purely secular journal," making it "the organ of no religious body whatsoever." The new paper had emerged from the ruins of an earlier venture called Utah Magazine, which failed when Mormon officials urged a boycott, calling the periodical "directly opposed to the work of God." Undaunted by the demise of the weekly magazine, the Tribune founders intensified their opposition to the Church, which controlled the influential opposition paper, Deseret News.

By 1873, the Tribune was struggling financially, forcing the original publishers to sell to three newspapermen from Kansas. These transplanted Kansans quickly turned up the heat in the paper's conflict with the Church establishment, focusing especially on attacks on the Mormon practice of polygamy. The Tribune's anti-Mormon stance was illustrated by an August 30, 1877 eulogy of Brigham Young, who had died the previous day. The late president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Tribune proclaimed, "by the system of terror he adopted, by his arrogant assumption of Divine power, by his unscrupulous use of the ignorance and credulity of his followers was...able to kill all dissensions in the fold." Such editorial assaults struck at the very heart of Mormonism, and Church newspapers were quick to respond in kind, dismissing the Tribune's owners as mere "border ruffians," a reference to the violent factions that struggled for control of Kansas before the Civil War.

In 1901, the Tribune was purchased by Thomas Kearns, who quickly sought to eliminate the newspaper's anti-Mormon tone and mold it into a more objective publication. Kearns began to modernize the paper by utilizing the new technologies; photographs replaced hand drawings in 1902, and four years later the publisher installed a Linotype machine that allowed for much faster typesetting. In 1952, the Tribune formed a partnership with its long-time rival, the Deseret News, allowing the two publications to merge advertising, production, and circulation departments. The joint operating agreement continues, and today the Tribune is Utah's most-widely circulated newspaper.