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Welcome to The Salt Lake Tribune’s 2025 annual report!
Back this year, this report is to update you, the community, on what the heck The Salt Lake Tribune is up to. It is our goal to be a community-driven news source, and so being transparent in what’s happening here is a natural result of that.
Tribune enthusiasts may remember last year’s annual report. Just like that one, this one is written by me, Andy Larsen, a sportswriter and data columnist here.
I’d say about 90% of what’s in that document still applies today, and it stands as a solid introduction to how The Tribune is organized and its financial history. This year’s report is more incremental: it’s about what we did this year and what we have planned in the future.
Especially eidetic Tribune enthusiasts may also remember that last year’s report came in July, whereas this one is coming in November. What gives?
Upon some reflection, we think it best to give this report closer to the end of the year on an annual basis; that allows us to give a better perspective on the year that was and the year upcoming. This also more closely matches the peak of our giving season — and our donors are among those most interested in how the paper is doing.
We spent 2025 pushing our big annual strategic goals through; interestingly, they buck the trend of what’s going on in the news industry nationwide. They’ll be the focus of the first two sections of this year’s report, and we’ll explain why we’re zagging. The next section details other developments around The Tribune this year, and, as always, we’ll wrap up with the numbers.
Removing the paywall
First of all, we’re excited to announce that The Tribune will be removing its paywall next year — we’re aiming to make the transition in the first quarter of the year.
This has been a goal of ours nearly ever since we became a nonprofit in 2019. The reason is simple: if the whole point of The Tribune is to be a community-driven news organization, then the whole community should be able to read that news — not just those who can pay for a subscription. It’s frustrating.
But the paywall was a necessary evil for a time because it kept The Tribune afloat. We simply needed the subscription revenue to persist. Now, though, we think we can survive, and even thrive, without it.
This isn’t just hopium. We’ve done the math and the work to support this move.
In 2025, we estimate we’ll make about $2.6 million in digital subscription revenue. In 2026, we’ll nearly zero that out, but we believe we’ll earn more than that amount from increased donations. How do we make that happen?
First of all, the support of large donors has made the transition possible. A $1 million pledge from Chris and Summer Gibson has been matched 1.5x by the community. Other donors have also stepped up in the recognition that we’re moving to a free-for-all setup, meaning we’re on pace to cover our 2026 bills.
We also believe that most of our current digital subscribers will join a voluntary and donation-based membership program. For one, a poll of our subscribers indicated the major reason they became subscribers in the first place was not to bypass the paywall, but to support independent news in Utah.
We were grateful for this, but we wanted to make sure. In 2024, we ran an experiment with a statistically significant and randomized number of our digital subscribers, telling them they’d now receive their digital Tribune subscription for free for three years. Upon receiving notification of this, they could choose to opt out of any recurring payment to The Tribune — or they could continue their payment, as a donation.
After three months, 87% of those who were newly receiving The Tribune for free were continuing their membership. And in the ensuing months, we’ve seen those people churn out of that donation at the same rate as our normal digital subscribers, another good sign.
I tend to believe that removing the paywall will also increase our readership — and therefore our online advertising revenue. But our management doesn’t want to count on that happening, so our projections for 2026 revenue don’t include any increases as a result of this. Removing the paywall will also allow us to simplify our tech stack, making visiting our website significantly more user-friendly.
So for most of 2026, Utahns will be able to choose between three main levels of voluntary Tribune membership: one at $5/month, one at $10/month, and one at $26/month. The tiers will provide various different benefits, like archive access, commenting privileges, and so on. The highest tier will include print delivery twice per week as one benefit members can choose.
To be sure, there’s some risk here in eliminating a revenue source. Over the next year, we’ll be focused on growing a reserve to ensure that the decision makes sense for the long run, not just the short term.
That means that yes, we’ll be asking folks to support The Tribune a lot in coming weeks. First, we’ll ask our existing subscribers if they’ll pledge to stay on as voluntary donors — which will allow us to better plan for the months and years to come. And then, yes, we’ll be seeking new donations from those who can afford it.
But we think — thanks to our preparation and experimentation — that this paywall-free model can and will work at The Tribune. More importantly, we also believe that it’s the right thing to do for Utah. Removing barriers to independent journalism is simply too important.
Truly local news across the state
Paywalls aren’t the only barrier that stands in the way of people getting the information they need. There’s been some really troubling data from across the country about news deserts — rural and suburban areas that had news outlets tailored to those communities, but have seen those close as a result of the economics of the traditional news industry.
We’re taking news deserts literally — by bringing news to the desert.
In October, we published the first issue of The Southern Utah Tribune, a new monthly newspaper for the Washington County community in southwestern Utah. It is mailed, for free, to 40,000 homes and businesses in the area. This isn’t a pamphlet, but a two-section newspaper; the first issue was 24 pages. An emailed newsletter and stories online are also free to read.
We have two reporters in the area, the stalwart Mark Eddington and the newcomer Brooke Larsen (no relation). Editorial oversight, production, ad sales, and most of the non-reporting jobs are done up by our staff in Salt Lake City, though we’re hiring a general manager in the coming weeks to run the paper from the St. George area.
The money on this makes perhaps a surprising amount of sense. Thanks to USPS’s Every Door Direct Mail program, we can print and mail The Southern Utah Tribune for roughly $12K per month — a number that shocked me when I first heard it, as it’s much lower than I expected. We aim to make about $40K per month in revenue by 2027, split roughly 50/50 between philanthropy and advertising. From there, the plan is that proceeds from the paper product can be used to build out even more news resources for the community later.
This push comes on the back of other successful local efforts. The Moab Times-Independent donated itself to The Tribune in 2023, and it has worked in largely the same way, a free product staffed by two reporters mailed to every household in Moab (though in Moab, we’re sending it weekly).
Our Cache Valley efforts to this point are smaller — one newsletter staffed by one reporter, who also has radio duties with Utah Public Radio — but we’ve been really happy with the growth in the “Cache Crop” newsletter over the past year. It’s a fun read with a few stories that impact the community directly, an events calendar, and a Pet of the Week.
Thanks to this, and our partnership with more than a dozen news outlets across the state through the Utah News Collaborative, reporting is gathered from and sent to cities and towns big and small in our state.
Salt Lake Tribune statewide partners.
These works come at very low risk to us, as they’ve all been supported for the first two years by grants we’ve received to build out local news across the state.
Working together is also useful in other ways. For example, when changes to Utah’s public records laws were proposed in last year’s legislative session that would have hurt journalists’ ability to report on the government, state legislators heard feedback directly from the small news sources in their communities, not just the big-city Tribune. We believe that made a difference in what was eventually passed.
Other important updates
So those are the big picture initiatives we’ve been focused on — but it’s certainly not all we’ve been up to.
We moved out of our offices of 20 years at The Gateway in favor of a new space, at about 300 South and between West Temple and Main Street. As discussed in last year’s report, this was done in large part to save us money; we’ll pay about $228K less in rent annually moving forward. We also liked finding offices that fit us a little better and put us back in SLC’s downtown core. I like the new digs so far… They have way, way, way more natural light than the old ones.
Last July, a majority of workers at The Tribune voted to form a union, called the Salt Lake News Guild. Since then, we’ve been negotiating a contract. I’m on the Guild’s Bargaining Committee of five, and it has been really interesting to work with (and, yes, debate with) Tribune management on the terms of our employment.
I’m very happy to report that we’ve come to an agreement! The contract is about 75 pages, so I’ll spare you all of the details, but highlights include a $60K minimum salary for all Tribune employees; guaranteed cost of living raises with a merit pay component on top; higher 401(k) matching, parental leave and increased personal days; guaranteed severance packages; and employment protections with regards to quantitative metrics and artificial intelligence. We also agreed on a hybrid work schedule.
We have heard from other outlets how contentious the bargaining process can be, and we are grateful that our process has been completed with mutual respect from both sides. Ultimately, having a shared goal of making The Tribune a great place to work was key, and we think we’ve accomplished that.
Our board this year made a few tweaks to how it operates. Formal committees now address various aspects of The Tribune’s operation, from philanthropy to news. As a result, they’ve reduced from 12 annual meetings of the full board to six, which allows those smaller committees more time to meet and work in the middle. More financial muscle was added to the board with the addition of Jamal Osman, an executive at Goldman Sachs.
Last year’s annual report featured a breakdown of our newsroom’s 60 news staffers. Upon further reflection, it probably just makes sense to show how our whole 80-person employment list is organized, so that we’re including the advertising, marketing, and production staff.
Finally, I want to take time to highlight the great work of my coworkers.
Emily Anderson Stern, Trevor Christensen, and Trent Nelson were on site at Utah Valley University when conservative personality Charlie Kirk was shot and killed — their writing, photos, and videos from the scene were instrumental in informing the public in perhaps the nation’s biggest news story this year. The whole newsroom chipped in after that, adding new information to stories that reached over 15 million Americans.
Unfortunately, it was the second time this year the newsroom rallied to cover a significant shooting. In June, the shooting of Afa Ah Loo, a local fashion designer, during a No Kings protest brought sorrow to SLC’s community. That was followed by dismay, as it was discovered Ah Loo was shot by a security “peacemaker” at the event. The Tribune covered all of the case’s twists and turns.
Robert Gehrke’s report that Utah Senate president Stuart Adams initiated a law change that, in the end, reduced criminal penalties for an 18-year-old relative who had been convicted of rape, was a real stunner. Courtney Tanner dug into what exactly is causing Utah’s university presidential spots to see unprecedented turnover (here’s a hint: political pressures from the state Legislature play a big role). Brooke Larsen’s coverage of wildfires and floods that devastated the southern Utah community of Pine Valley was absolutely top class.
The reporting mentioned above constituted just a small fraction of our reporting last year, but highlights how important local journalism can be.
The numbers
All right, time to get into the nitty gritty.
We’ll start by looking at the Tribune’s audience numbers. Yes, we love it when people come to SLTrib.com and read us directly. But the truth is that our nonprofit mission to inform Utah is also accomplished when people consume our reporting on other platforms and on social media.
We’ve seen a significant expansion of that this year, you can see the growth in YouTube, Instagram, and Apple News especially. To wit:
Comparing Tribune audiences in 2024 and the first three quarters of 2025.
Of those who come to SLTrib.com, we’re 54.5% male and 45.5% female. About 45% of our users are below the age of 45. Neat symmetry, that.
Here’s how our subscriber counts stand, a few months before we turn off the paywall:
We saw some growth in digital subscriptions but a decline in print subscriptions, which makes sense. We increased the price of the twice-weekly print subscription from $265/year to $312/year and projected a decline of 1,700 subscribers as a result in 2025. So far, we’re down only 943. That being said, we’re going to work to increase our print circulation number in the months to come with a goal of providing more value for our print advertisers. To make this happen, we’ll distribute the newspaper in more community locations, and focus on print’s availability in the context of our membership tiers.
With this report’s move to November, we’ll be showing you mid-year projected numbers — in other words, numbers informed by actual performance in the first and second quarter of the year, with projections in place for how we’ll do in Q3 and Q4. Here’s our projected overall revenue picture for the year:
Subscriptions and donations make up about 72% of our revenue. In 2025, print advertising has been strong, but our direct-sold digital advertising has been significantly lower than expected. We’ve had a shortage of staff there for much of 2025, and it has impacted our ability to consistently sell all of our digital ad space to local businesses.
However, thanks to proactive expense management, we’re still on pace to hit our net revenue target. That’s the big number for us, as we look to maintain sustainability at The Tribune for years to come. Here’s our cost picture:
Payroll is, by far, our biggest expenditure. The biggest difference between 2025 projected costs and actual costs so far is that less is being spent on payroll than expected. Remember when I told you we had a shortage of advertising staff?
One cost we’re curious about: comics. We spent $159,156 on comics in 2025. It feels like a lot. We also know people really enjoy comics, and we don’t want subscribers marching on our offices with pitchforks. So we’ll be asking our print subscribers to give their feedback on which comics they like most and how much they value the comics page in general in this upcoming year.
All in all, we’re still targeted to make about $1 million in net revenue in 2025. That is projected to be largely spent in two places in 2026: first, to greater employee pay and benefits, and second, to a reserve fund to ensure the long-term successful operation of The Tribune, especially considering the removal of the paywall.
Conclusion
Looking over what we’ve worked for this year, I have to be honest: I’m filled with a tremendous amount of pride.
It is extremely gratifying to be part of a team of extraordinary journalists who seek to tell stories people can’t get anywhere else. From sharing the news of a local mom-and-pop restaurant opening to accountability reporting on the largest institutions in our state, we try to share stories that will be essential to you.
That we’re making huge strides this year in ensuring that reporting is available to everyone in Utah — not limited by a paywall, not limited by geography — is the cherry on top. The nonprofit model has been brilliant for us, in part because it incentivizes exactly these sorts of moves.
The biggest reason it’s worked out so well, though, is the backing we’ve received. That you all find community-powered journalism so important, just as we do, has made it possible to turn some of our goals into reality.
Thank you for all of your support through 2025 and into 2026. We couldn’t do it without you.