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Antitrust Episode IN SUMMARY, the hundred-year life-span of The Salt Lake Tribune can be divided roughly into seven periods, each of which posed its own peculiar problems and editorial responses which management deemed appropriate for their solution. One problem common to all the periods was generating from circulation and advertising enough revenue to pay costs of publishing plus a margin of profit or of raising money from other sources to cover deficits. The Tribune passed through periods of profitable and of deficit operations but throughout both strove to publish a product which would merit and attract the public acceptance required to achieve profitability. There were, no doubt, periods when its owners deliberately and knowingly pursued editorial policies which they could anticipate would produce deficits. In those instances it can be fairly assumed that they either thought the deficits would in the long run turn into profits or they were imbued with a conviction that the newspaper had a public obligation of higher priority than short-run profits for themselves. For the mission The Tribune had undertaken — to serve as the other voice in a bitterly divided society — demanded that it take positions which would be deeply resented by a large part of the citizenry within its circulation territory. Had it sacrificed principle and its moral concern on the crucial issues of the times it surely would have expired long before changing attitudes and policies cleared the way to an accommodation.
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