| Show UTAH SIX SURVIVING DAILIES the other for Cedar City After two introductory weeks of free daily circulation campaign for subscribers was launched and soon brought800 readers who paid 75 per month By yearend the number of subscribers totalled nearly900 By 1980 it had reached500 and by 1984 12 882 -a 616 growth in seven years The TMC concept had been maintained through blanket mailing ofweekly advertiser Meanwhile their reluctance to go to TMC cost the St George and Cedar City weeklies local advertising support and in 1982 Stahle purchased the Iron County Record in Cedar City Growth of the Spectrum went hand-in-hand with that of the area Between 1972 and February 1984 when Stahle sold the paper the circulation areapopulation grew from an estimated 32 224 to 63 820 and Washington countypopula tion climbed from 13 669 to 32 812 Annual revenue was more than 000 000 Perhaps the major feather in the Spectrum cap under Stahleguidance wasPulitzer Prize nomination in 1982 It was the result of the papercoverage of nationwide move ments of the Townships called Posse Comitatis which translates to Peoples Militia In 1982 the paper began to receive information from undisclosed sources concerningconstitutional fundamentalist group headed by Walter Mann IIL The grouppurpose was to establish military-style satellite units around the country and developgovernmental organization Their plan was to wait for the ultimate failure of the United States government when the Townships would quickly assume leadership at all levels of government The Washington county group was called the ZionTownship and one of its members after seeing but not agreeing with the Possedirection began feeding information to the Spectrum Investigation by Rogers and editor Carrick Leavitt turned up facts they viewed as very serious -the group was converting semi-automatic weapons to automatic ones accumulating arsenals of weapons and ammunition and had hit list of local government officials 169 Digital image 2005 Marriott Library University of Utah Al rights reserved |
