For 150 years, The Salt Lake Tribune reported the news independently of the Mormon Church that dominates Utah politics and culture. O.N. Malmquist recorded the first part of that uneasy relationship in The First 100 Years: A History of The Salt Lake Tribune, 1871-1971. With a more relaxed approach, The Tribune's first female education editor and editorial writer, Diane Cole, covers much of the next half century in From Rag to Riches & Ruin, My Times at The Salt Lake Tribune, 1972-1998 and Beyond. Cole's critical, mischievous eye captures irreverent, often hard-drinking characters in the throes of major journalistic transition. She tells about women, minorities, professionals and computers infiltrating the newsroom of Utah's largest daily newspaper. She addresses the financial pressures that opened the door to ownership changes manipulated by the Mormon Church but beneficial to her personally. She describes the dizzying effect of instant wealth for staffers living paycheck to paycheck. As a memoir, this book enables Cole to demonstrate how her own experiences informed her reporting and commentary. Yet several other staffers contributed anecdotal memories, remarks and graphics to the project. Most photographs are from her own files and those of photographer Tim Kelly and artist Dennis Green, her husband. Others come from digital sites and Tribune archives discarded during the newspaper's move across town. The memoir is designed to resemble The Tribune as it was in the 1970s. As a work of non-fiction, From Rag to Riches & Ruin can supplement studies in Utah history, politics, sociology, communications, psychology, English, education, law and even business as it demonstrates real applications of free speech, equal rights, ethics, writing methods, business management and investment, and cultural change. Beyond that, it appeals to general readers by bringing to life personalities from a unique place during tense times -- and offering the kind of inside information that is often accessible only through gossip or nosey reporters like the author.
