![]() ![]() (The hyperlinks are added by me, replacing the footnote citations in the document.)Īs its primary activity, the Charity intends to produce, print, and distribute (both in print and digitally) The Salt Lake Tribune (“The Tribune”), a local, independent newspaper in Utah. “Throughout the history of this nation, newspapers have provided the bulk of the civically important functions that democracy requires.” However, since 2004, almost 1,800 local newspapers have closed, including more than 60 daily newspapers and 1,700 weekly newspapers. News organizations are fundamentally civic in nature - they investigate and report on information that is important to the community - yet, local newspapers across the country are being closed or severely downsized. Leaders in the Salt Lake City area, in particular Paul Huntsman, have created the Charity to address a crisis in the availability of quality journalism that could deprive the state of Utah of access to important information that citizens need to function and thrive. The Charity is organized and operated to educate, advance, and inform public discourse through local, independent journalism in Utah. (Despite the paper’s and the Huntsmans’ deep ties to Utah, it’s a Delaware corporation.) Here’s how the Tribune justified putting its work under the “educational” umbrella for nonprofit status ( we unpacked what that means with a media law expert earlier this year): Owner Paul Huntsman incorporated the charity of the Tribune earlier this year as part of the application. The first 20 pages house a lot of legal speak and checklists, showing that the leadership has signed onto the process, the compensation of its editorial heads, and other financial data. ![]() Here’s all 59 pages of the Tribune’s application and the IRS response, and below is our breakdown of the important parts of it (highlights are mine): Postal Service, we have the Tribune’s full application and the brief, form-letter IRS response. Thanks to a fax machine, the IRS, and the U.S. In other words, it might be a good time to get the IRS to okay something new without many questions!) “Auditors are stretched thin, and they’re often forced to limit their investigations and move on to the next audit as quickly as they can,” a ProPublica investigation reported last December. It had one-third fewer auditors and conducted 42 percent fewer audits in 2017 than in 2010. (While it is a happy event for the Tribune to blaze this new path, it’s worth noting that the unexpected and no-questions-asked IRS ruling comes at a time when IRS funding has been gutted. “We want to make sure we’re making decisions that make sense for us as an institution, make sure they are in the context of the larger national and what this means for other papers and for journalism generally.” “Without a lot of feedback from the IRS, we’re grateful that we have a pretty blank slate,” vice president of business innovation Fraser Nelson said then. Surprised, and curious: How did they pull this off? ![]() November 4, 2019So when the Tribune announced it had secured nonprofit status, many people were surprised - including the leadership itself, who had expected a lengthy question-and-answer process from the IRS with a potential verdict in early 2020. ![]()
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