Last Wednesday, about 50 people marched from This is the Place Monument to the Church Office Building, pulling a handcart, to deliver 2,000 petition signatures, calling for Church leaders to salvage relations with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. The Salt Lake Tribune covered it — 600 words. The Deseret News covered it — 300 words. KSL and Fox 13 covered it. The Daily Universe did not.
Without touching on the offensive nature of drawing an analogy between the LGBT community’s trials and those of the handcart pioneers, without mentioning the twisting of sacred LDS history and symbols to suit a political agenda, there are reasons why The Daily Universe prints what it prints.
Here’s a newsflash: The Daily Universe is a news organization, and as such, does not jump through public relations hoops. It is a news business, whose mission is to provide readers with interesting and relevant information about current events, “newsworthy” events. Think about the meaning of that word: “worthy of news.”
Every beginning journalism student learns what makes something worthy of being in the news: Proximity — how close, physically, or metaphysically, is the news to the readers? Timeliness — how recently did the event take place or how soon will it? Importance — the prominence or impact of an event. Along with these, drama, conflict, variety, human interest and humor can make a story more newsworthy.
In and of themselves, these traits do not make something newsworthy, but in concert, they can shoot an article to the front page. But newsworthiness is inherent in real news — the passing of key, albeit tedious, legislation, for example, or the outcome of a major sports event.
This is where events like last Wednesday’s publicity stunt fail. Publicity stunts are not newsworthy. They seek to imitate real news by conjuring up the illusion of importance.
Organizations sometimes stage events to attract media coverage. While gay rights is a high-profile issue that The Daily Universe will continue to cover, this event — the pulling of a handcart from This is the Place Monument to the Church Office Building by 50 people with 2,000 signatures — was not. It was an attempt to gain coverage for an un-newsworthy event, and the LDS church recognized it as such by sending a public relations representative to accept the petitions, rather than the two people the group hoped to meet with them, LDS Apostle Dallin H. Oaks and Elder Bruce Hafen.
“The church meets with responsible groups all the time on a variety of issues — but we don’t do it to garner publicity,” church spokeswoman Kim Farah said in a phone interview with The Salt Lake Tribune after the event.
The blurring of the line between advertisers, PR practitioners and journalists is something The Daily Universe seeks to avoid on a daily basis as it chooses what events to cover. The Daily Universe will print real, newsworthy news on important issues and events, but it will not provide PR for any organization. No news organization should.
If it’s not real news, we’re not interested. And if there’s not a “so what?” to the story, why would anyone care about it?
Feeds 
I agree with this editorial piece as far as new organizations should cover newsworthy information. I do not agree however that the Universe is currently following this definition of newsworthiness. History was made this week with the passing of two ordinances in Salt Lake City protecting citizens from being fired or evicted because of the sexual orientation with support from the LDS Church. Not only was this the biggest piece of news in the state is also relevant to a community that primarily consists of people of the LDS faith. Instead of this being the headline story on the front page we had an advertisement for a concert with publicity photos from a record company adorning the front page. Not only was the big news not the headline it was also an AP story instead of a local, LDS, BYU student perspective on the story. This was also Veteran's Day, which I believe would have provided something more newsworthy than David Archuleta coming to town. Just some thoughts about what newsworthy is.
Does the irony of this editorial escape everyone else? The simple fact that you feel the need to spend 10 paragraphs explaining why a particular event was not covered in your paper is evidence enough that the event was indeed newsworthy.
Writing a thorough opinion piece about newsworthiness hardly constitutes proof that the grand 50-member gay march (downhill, when their battle is most definitely uphill) was newsworthy. If Heather's explanation would have appeared on the front page implying that the DU would rather run those 10 paragraphs as news than cover the gay PR stunt, THEN you would be correct in labeling this as an example of irony. What you DO have here is one more instance in a long history of great Viewpoint articles in the DU Opinion section (Many of these very pieces in the past have given favorable treatment to Same Sex, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender issues and erspectives). Whether or not you agree with the decision to refuse to cover the hike (I mean march) in question, the explanation of that decision was well written and informative.
Fair enough, but this pretty much puts to rest the debate about whether there is bias in the news (one way or another), wouldn't you say? This is pretty much Exhibit A - a tacit admission that "newsworthiness" is completely subjective.
Determining newsworthiness is "completely subjective?" How do you make the jump between DU officials and editors making calls that hope to predict reader interest trends and improve circulation, and the DU being biased or in "another way" prejudiced against certain groups or issues? It's obvious that because it's produced by humans, journalism, even good journalism, will always include some level of subjective filtering. That is precisely why the public chooses to read, watch, and listen to the journalists whose perspectives, subtle or not, they prefer the most. If you imply that journalism should be "completely" objective, you need to invent a way for technology to observe the happenings of this world and simply transcribe and synthesize them for the people (oh, and make sure that the software for such tech eyes and ears is produced without bias). Ridiculous. There is no debate about bias. I would agree that quality journalists cannot openly accept one side of an issue and then claim to "report" on it. But deciding not to even include a story does not amount to "bias" nor "complete subjectivity"
I agree with the Heather, the writer, on this matter. News organizations should not cover events designed to make news. The Balloon Boy hoax was such a thing. The father wanted to get publicity and chose to do so in a sensationalized way. That was the design. The handcart-toting gay-rights people did pretty much the same thing--they tried to make a sensational event to generate publicity. That, by itself, means it shouldn't be covered. You shouldn't always drop everything, especially more important things, and give attention to a screaming child.
I don't think this is "Exhibit A" evidence at all. I'm not saying I don't think the Daily Universe has never been bias. I think it was a proper and journalistically educated decision on part of the Daily Universe staff. Good job folks--you make me proud.
I'm not pointing in particular at any news organization, including the Universe, when I say that this is proof that bias exists. Proximity, timeliness, importance... none of these are determined by some objective entity. They are all determined by humans who, whether they admit it or not, have opinions and preferences that at some level will affect their choices regarding news coverage.
Who are we to say whether the Balloon Boy thing was newsworthy or not? It was to some, not to others. There's no way the "news" can cover every single thing that happens every single day, so choices have to be made. Those choices are intrinsically biased. This bias can be huge (in cases such as the dominant U.S. media establishment) or it can be small, but it is what it is - people deciding what to report based on what they think is important.