The Salt Lake Tribune drops its paywall starting Thursday, moving to a free-to-read nonprofit donor model at sltrib.com.
Key Takeaways
All Salt Lake Tribune journalism becomes free at sltrib.com; the org is asking readers to support the new phase through donations.
The Tribune is framing this as a structural shift, not a temporary promotion – editorial columnist Robert Gehrke calls it a “massive victory.”
The donor list is public at sltrib.com/supporters, signaling transparency about funding sources.
No explicit mention in the announcement of whether advertising will remain part of the revenue mix.
Hacker News Comment Review
Commenters are split on donor-funded vs. advertiser-funded independence; the consensus leans toward donors being the lesser editorial risk, but neither model fully solves alignment drift over time.
The Canadian publicly-funded press is cited as a cautionary case: government-adjacent funding can suppress coverage of major legislation, a structural risk the Tribune model may not escape if large institutional donors dominate.
De Correspondent’s subscriber share-link model (subscribers read, anyone can open a shared link) gets traction as a middle path the Tribune did not adopt – LWN.net and The Telegraph use similar mechanics.
Notable Comments
@locusofself: flags that the announcement never explicitly states whether ads will continue, a key revenue detail left unresolved.
@banana_gappa: warns AI is making it harder for news orgs to justify free models, as traffic-to-revenue conversion erodes further.
