28 Tribune's Crusading Role DURING THE FIRST FORTY years of its life The Tribune was a crusading newspaper. It attacked its enemies and defended its friends with single-minded zeal and enthusiasm. It performed, in a remarkably competent way in view of the facilities it had, the function of communicating information and straight news to its readers. Simultaneously, it expended extraordinary energy in ferreting out causes to support and causes to combat. Its fervor in these pursuits was often more conspicuous than its discrimination. Up until the end of 1910 its central targets were the economic, political and social aims and practices of the Mormon Church. Throughout this period it was crusading on scores of issues which were peripheral but pertinent to the main targets. During the following sixty-year span of its life it has not been a crusading newspaper in the sense usually implied by that term. That does not mean that it abdicated its responsibility of keeping a critical eye on governmental affairs; of speaking out on policies and practices it deemed contrary to the public interest or of supporting those it deemed in the public interest; of campaigning for civic improvements; of expressing its views and the reason for its views on controversial alternative courses of action; of initiating and supporting changes which it believed would be constructive or of opposing those it believed would be destructive; and of providing a means for conflicting viewpoints to be heard.
346
