The Salt Lake Tribune -- Pressure Led to Trib Sale

AT&T Corp. wanted to get rid of The Salt Lake Tribune by selling it to the LDS Church-owned Deseret News because of "serious threats to AT&T's political interests in the state," according to court documents unsealed Tuesday.

The "great outcome" of such a sale, wrote AT&T Broadband President Leo J. Hindery Jr. to AT&T board member John C. Malone, would be "the good will we will have preserved with the Mormon church and the political leadership of the state."

The July 1999 memo to Malone was an effort to win his support of the Deseret News' planned purchase of The Tribune for $175 million. Two years earlier, Malone had promised the family that owned The Tribune he would support their bid to buy the newspaper back Aug. 1, 2002. The McCarthey family intends to exercise that contested bid, the subject of a federal lawsuit, at one minute past midnight tonight.