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Show 192 opposing sides of debates focused either on creating national parks or mining within them. Herc again, the news value of conflic1 was manifested. Despite the news values that brought Utah's parks into the pages of The New York Times, conflict was not enough for editors at the San Francisco Examiner to devote significant attention to any of Utah's parks. The lack of attention from the Examiner is surprising during the 1910s and 1920s because of the role the newspaper played early in the national park debate. The scant coverage published in the 1960s and 1970s is surprising considering the role Utah's parks played in the broader environmental movement, which was covered in the San Francisco newspaper. However, absence of coverage, like coverage itself, is his1orical evidence. What that evidence means in this case requires further research focused on panems of environmental coverage in the Examiner and how its editors evaluated the news value of stories. Although the Examiner paid only cursory attention to Utah's national parks, those infrequent accounts did correlate with evidence gathered from other newspapers: that the environment became a subject of the news about Utah's national parks, not just a siagc on which the debate played out. However, the strongest evidence that the journalism of the more recent parks gave a voice to the environment came from two articles by Deseret News staffer Hartt Wixom. One article was headlined "Strip Mining May Endanger Capitol Reef,"570 and the other was "Old Mining Laws Tenned Threat to Environment.'.s71 The byline on these articles, in addition to thejournalis1's name, carried the title "Environmental Editor." The newspaper's assigrunent of an editor specifically to HO Wixom, ··May Endanger Capitol Reef," Deseret News, April 27, 1971. 511 Hartt Wixom, ··Qld Mining Laws Termed Threat 10 tnvironment," Deseret New.f, June 14, 1971, Bl. |
