Bill Brown just gave you a horror story about the situation in 

 which he said, "Yeah, I'll tell you some things as long as they're off 

 the record." Bill has every justification in the world about being upset 

 about that. If a reporter agrees to listen to you off the record, then 

 that's really what it ought to be. But the problems are there. The 

 problems of what we perceive in some cases as trying to over-manage 

 news, makes the news media defensive and in the long run creates some 

 problems for all of us. Not the least of which is the general public 

 because that is what we are really looking at. It doesn't really make 

 any difference how informed we are. You, as sources of environmental 

 and outdoors news, know the information. We hope we know it after we 

 talk to you. But what we're trying to do is serve the public here. 

 And these kinds of interaction problems are resulting more and more, I 

 think, in a badly informed public really. If we could create a world in 

 which all journalists were completely responsible, had photographic 

 memories by which they could quote everybody absolutely perfectly--not 

 a word out of context--that'd be great. It would also be great if we 

 lived in a world where all the agencies and the sources of this kind of 

 news were 100 percent candid and also 100 percent willing to do the 

 translation that's necessary with this kind of information. That's not 

 how it is and I think you all realize that. 



I hesitate to get into a bit-by-piece answer situation as far as 

 Bill's presentation was concerned, because of the fact that all 

 newspapers, all editors, all publishers are not the same. In fact, I 

 would be willing to say that every newspaper editor and every 

 newspaper publisher you encounter is going to have a little bit 

 different philosophy about how the newspaper does things, how 

 aggresive it is about covering issue-oriented material, how passive it 

 might be. And there are newspapers in the Rocky Mountain region that 

 wouldn't touch a hot issue with a ten-foot pole, simply because they 

 feel that if they get that controversy going in their newspaper, they're 

 not going to be selling any more newspapers. Nov that is hogwash. 

 That is completely ridiculous. Most of the daily newspapers that exist 

 in the Rocky Mountain region are complete monopolies, with the 

 exception of those in Denver, where there are two large dailies and Salt 

 Lake City, where there are two large dailies. Any place where you 

 only have one daily newspaper serving a circulation area, you really 

 don't have very much to worry about. People are getting their spot 

 news on television, but they are still relying on the daily newspaper 

 for the depth. And so we hea the excuse that if we get into that story, 

 if we start stirring that pot, we're going to lose subscribers. You 

 might lose three subscribers. At the Herald Journal we have 

 outrageously offended serveral people in government, and some people 

 who are not in goverment. And our publisher worries a little bit from 

 time to time about the possibility of our losing circulation. I think the 

 worst thing that ever happened at the Herald Journal occured when we 

 published a picture on page one last year--almost a year from now--of a 

 graduate from Utah State University who chose to wear some cutoffs 

 under his cap and gown. He had a bandanna handkerchief headband 

 and he had no shoes on. He also had a paper cup in his hand, which 

 we later discovered was Kool-Aid or something like that. But my 

 Saturday night editor chose to put this picture on the front page. Now 



