The ongoing decline of newspapers is well documented.

The Deseret News, under its mantra of being “More Mormon and More Local,” is poised to thrive, however. No one ever said the “Mo-Mo-Mo-Lo” business model wasn’t going to be smart business, those of us who lamented it were more upset that news objectivity was appearing to go out the window.

Now, however, not only is the business model for the News being called sound by newspaper analysts, the DesNews’ relationship with the LDS Church has it being described as a bulletproof newspaper, and possibly the only one in the country when you see big dogs like USA Today and the New York Times struggling.

Veteran newspaper analyst John Morton said The Salt Lake Tribune remains viable but that the Deseret News stands out for being practically bulletproof.

“The Deseret News will survive because the church wants it to,” said Morton, president of media consulting firm Morton Research Inc. of Silver Spring, Md.

According to Paul Foy’s AP article, former SLTrib publisher Dominic Welch was sort of prophetic and called this a dozen years ago. During a board meeting at the DNews, Welch apparently walked into the meeting and said “This town isn’t big enough for two newspapers … it ain’t going to be you (that fails.)”

I think it’s great that the church will likely stand behind the DesNews, but I have a hard time reconciling the DesNews as the only paper in the Salt Lake market, given the recent stories about various articles being killed or changed to present favorable coverage to the church. It’s one thing if the DesNews exists as a niche publication, they can get away with that, but if they’re the main media voice in the market (assuming a world without the Trib) then that is bad for the media consumers.

Source: Deseret News | Bucking trends, Utah’s Mormon newspaper sees gains.