I know the Mayor Winder episode has already been widely discussed here at RfM. About a year ago, LDS, Inc replaced many paid professional journalists at Deseret News with non paid freelancers. This was done to save money. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out how to game the system. DNews also openly embrace a "values" oriented bias to the news (as opposed to an unbiased reporting and interpreting of facts).

The following quote from a professor of journalism is really spot on.

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"What Winder did was he exposed the fraud that Deseret Connect is. They are not up front with where these stories are coming from. [The writers] are essentially freelancers who make the audience feel like [the paper has] a staff, and that’s not true anymore,” said Kim Zarkin, assistant professor of communication at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/52930534-79/citizen-connect-contributors-deseret.html.csp

If I lived there in utah, there'd be no way in heck I'd subscribe to the DN. It would be the SLTribune for me instead.

I keep running into this in today's business. Companies want to pay little or, even better, nothing for the stuff that requires humans. If they can't outsource it, they crowdsource it.

The DesNews would probably love to use the church's model, though, where the suckers pay for the "honor" of working for the church. "Gee, how can we get our crowdsourcers to pay us to get published?"

I used to live next door to this guy. Arrogant SOB. Writing those silly 'The President of the US of A Visits the Prophet' etc., books.

He was such a TBM too. I wonder if he has been having testimony problems?

Naaaaaaa. But this may be a damper on his goal to be a GA one day.