Park Record Editor Bubba Brown, who led the newsroom through the extraordinary difficulties of the novel coronavirus pandemic and, as a reporter earlier in his tenure at the newspaper, covered the heart-wrenching overdose deaths of two 13-year-olds, will depart shortly for a writing position at the University of Utah School of Medicine.
The move was announced to staffers on Wednesday. His last day at the newspaper is planned on April 1. He will be a senior technical writer at the Rocky Mountain Center for Occupational and Environmental Health, which is within the medical school.
The Park Record hired Brown as a reporter covering business and education in mid-2014 after stints with the Standard-Examiner in Ogden and The Salt Lake Tribune. He covered the business beat as the Park City area continued a strong comeback from the recession of 2007-2009. The education beat he covered ultimately was defined by the 2016 deaths of two boys from synthetic opioid overdoses and the wide impact the deaths had on the community.
He was named the editor in October of 2017, just weeks before Park City voters chose a new mayor and in the year before voters in the community approved a ballot measure providing most of the monies needed for City Hall to acquire the Treasure acreage overlooking Old Town. Both of the campaigns were highly charged.
Brown later held a key role in The Park Record’s response to the pandemic, which would lead to some of the newspaper’s most important coverage of the community’s modern era. From the outset of the crisis, he formulated a strategy that relied on coverage of the spread of the sickness itself coupled with articles centered on the economic convulsions caused by the coronavirus-forced shutdowns. The coverage was made even more difficult with newsroom layoffs in the early months of the pandemic and with staffers working remotely.
Brown is 31 and lives in the Snyderville Basin with his family. He is a graduate of the University of Utah.
“I have always been proud of how Bubba represented The Park Record, he understood and embraced the responsibility of his position. He will be missed by our staff and the Park City community,” Park Record Publisher Andy Bernhard said, adding that Brown “applied a steady hand during a period of extraordinary controversy with issues over growth, development, affordable housing and notably, a divisive and contentious election last November.”
He added: “Bubba was presented with an excellent career development opportunity and we wish him well in his future endeavors.”
Internally, Brown was editor during a change in ownership of The Park Record and, earlier, as a former owner introduced new systems that altered the workflow of the newspaper.
The Park Record has launched a national search for the next editor. Bernhard said “interest in the position has been impressive, although I anticipate this to be a lengthy process.” A precise timeline for the naming of the next editor was not known late in the week.