Lauren Gustus

Executive Editor & CEO, The Salt Lake Tribune

Lauren Gustus is CEO and executive editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, which was the first major metro news organization to become a nonprofit. It achieved sustainability in 2021 under Lauren’s leadership.

The Tribune shares its daily reporting with journalism partners across the state through the Utah News Collaborative. In 2023, The Moab Times-Independent donated itself to The Tribune, which oversees its operations. Moab retains independence with respect to newsgathering.

Lauren also helped incubate the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a group of 17 organizations focused on elevating solutions to the lake’s challenges that has spurred hundreds of millions in support for the lake.

Under her stewardship, The Tribune is working to transition from subscribership to membership in 2026, opening up the nonprofit’s reporting online and making it free to read.

Lauren previously worked for McClatchy as West Region Editor, overseeing 10 news organizations in Idaho, Washington and California, including the flagship Sacramento Bee. She has also served as an editor in Colorado, where her work on transparency contributed to a new law that facilitated greater access to public records, and in Reno, where her team’s work on the housing crisis was recognized nationally.

She is a coach in the Media Transformation Challenge at Medill, supporting news leaders across the country as they look to make performance-driven change.