Salt Lake dailies miss story on SEC subpoena of Overstock.com

William Wolfrum writes on DagBlog.com that when Utah-based discount retailer Overstock.com received a subpoena earlier last week from the Securities and Exchange Commission, few business news readers in the state knew about it.

Wolfrum writes, “Of course, investors in the Salt Lake City who only get their news from one of the local newspapers — the Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret Morning News — currently have no idea about the current status of Overstock.com — located near Salt Lake City — as the two local newspapers have yet to report anything on the subpoena or Byrne’s reactions.

“Despite attempts to contact the Deseret NMorning News Business section, they have yet to comment on why and how they missed the story. At the SLC Tribune, Business Editor Michael Limon said that the story just got passed them, most likely due to a a key business reporter being off. ‘I’m just as embarrassed as can be about it,’ said Limon.

“The SLC Tribune and Deseret News are both distributed by Newspaper Agency Corporation.”

Read more here. I checked the sites of both papers this afternoon and could find no follow-up story. The last Overstock.com story on the Deseret site was last week, and it was about how company sales would help injured soldiers.

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne has been highly critical of how his company has been covered by business journalists.