On my supposed expulsion from the “Deseret News”

I’ve received some expressions of concern (and seen one or two expressions of delight) at what a few have taken to be my dismissal or demotion at the Deseret News, as revealed by the fact that my column for this week didn’t appear on the Deseret News website as expected on Thursday but, instead and to my surprise, on Friday on the LDS Living website.  (I posted a comment on this to me unforeseen event yesterday.)

Permit me to clarify things just a bit, on the basis of what I currently understand:

As far as I know, my column was published in the print edition of the Deseret News on Thursday.  I’m not absolutely sure of that, since neither my house nor anybody I know currently subscribes to the print edition of the Deseret News.  But that is what I was told by my immediate editor at the newspaper.  What was different this past week was that the online version of the column was published not by the Deseret News but by LDS Living.

I don’t know whether this will always be the case with my columns in the future, or not.  But I do know that this change reflects altered arrangements at the Deseret News and within its affiliated publications and organizations, and that my column and I are not alone in being affected by the alterations.

This past Thursday, along with other writers for the Mormon Times section of the Deseret News, I received an email from one of the senior editors there.  In it, he indicated that some changes had taken place on DeseretNews.com over the past few months.  Among them, he mentioned that a new site, LDSChurchNews.com, had been launched in April and that all of the content produced by the Church News team had been “migrated” at that point from DeseretNews.com onto the new site.  He also indicated that, a few months ago, the Mormon Times group had begun sharing some of the stories produced for the print edition of Mormon Times with LDSLiving.com, which — I had once known this, but had forgotten it — is actually operated by Deseret Book, which is a sister company of the Deseret News.  “This,” he said, “is something we plan to do with more frequency.  Going forward, you will likely see some, if not all, of your writing that appears in the Mormon Times print edition go online at LDSLiving.com instead of DeseretNews.com.”

In response to an inquiry from me, my editor told me that I’m still expected to submit articles at the same frequency and in the same way — that is, to the Deseret News.

So there’s no reason to be either concerned or delighted at my rejection by the Deseret News, because no such rejection has occurred.  Not yet, anyway!  A few folks may be relieved by that.  Others will most definitely be disappointed.

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I’ve been neglecting my Mormon Scholars Testify site.  But I’m very pleased to announce that a new entry was posted earlier today:

https://www.fairmormon.org/testimonies/scholars/stephen-cranney