Salt Lake City Weekly
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The Salt Lake City Weekly is a free alternative weekly tabloid-paged newspaper published in Salt Lake City, Utah. It began its life as the Private Eye. The City Weekly is published and dated for every Thursday by Copperfield Publishing Inc. owned by John Saltas. Circulation is about 60,500.
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History
As a part-time hobby, John Saltas founded what would become the Salt Lake City Weekly in the 1980s. He called his publication the Private Eye, so named because it contained news and promotions for private clubs. In Utah, "private clubs" are the only businesses allowed to serve hard liquor except for state-owned liquor stores. Saltas originally mailed the Private Eye as a newsletter to private club members. State law forbid private clubs from advertising at the time, so Saltas' newsletter was the only way for them to get promotions out.
In 1988, the Private Eye became a bi-weekly newspaper although it was available mostly in clubs. Distribution of the paper broadened as laws allowed mainstream media to carry club advertisements as long as they weren't "soliciting" members.
Private Eye Weekly
In 1992 the Private Eye Weekly emerged as a weekly tabloid-style alternative paper available for free pick-up at restaurants and other establishments in Salt Lake City. Saltas hired his first editor, then-KSL-TV journalist Tom Walch. Walch took a significant salary cut because of his enthusiasm for the newpaper.
The Private Eye's early contributors included Ben Fulton, now editor of the paper, Christopher Smart, now a reporter for the Salt Lake Tribune, and famous Utah defense attorney Ron Yengich. Perhaps the most important early writer was Lynn Packer. From 1992 onward, Packer scooped many stories about then-Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini. Prominently, the paper found evidence linking Corradini to fraud with Bonneville Pacific. Packer also documented approximately $230,000 in gifts funneled to the mayor. This became dubbed "Giftgate", and was among the City Weekly's most important beats. A dramatic turn occurred in 1996 when a federal grand jury looking into loosely-related tax evasion charges was disbanded without voting on whether to indict Corradini on fraud. No other local media covered the story until after the Private Eye Weekly broke it.
Interestingly, Ron Yengich ended his ties with the paper in 1997 when Deedee Corradini retained him as her attorney.
In the early 1990s the paper began giving out yearly awards that were chosen by readers. The categories and pages devoted to the "Best of Utah" issues expanded over time, and these issues are typically the largest published all year. Many establishments proudly display City Weekly "Best of..." awards, and often have several years worth mounted above the cash register.
Another yearly theme issue concerns local music. In 1996 these issues were dubbed the "SLAMMY awards" (Salt Lake Area Music & More). Like the "Best of Utah" issue, locals are encouraged to vote for their favorite local bands and albums in different categories. The paper also hosts a party featuring several of the winners.
In 1996 the Private Eye Weekly outgrew independent local presses and made arrangements with the publisher of the Ogden Standard Examiner which have endured ever since. Content for the City Weekly is sent by computer to the press in Ogden, and bundles of printed papers are trucked back south into Salt Lake City. The paper also began posting all content online in 1996 at the address www.avenews.com (which was a play on the historic Avenues neighborhood). The paper now uses www.slweekly.com.
Salt Lake City Weekly
In 1997 the growing paper changed its name to the Salt Lake City Weekly to better reflect its legitimacy as an alternative news source. This name is usually abbreviated to City Weekly by readers and even the paper's masthead.
The paper, fiercely proud of its history of investigative journalism, credits itself with breaking key parts of the 2002 Winter Olympics bribery scandal. Discoveries that International Olympic Committee members apparently accepted gifts in return for votes to select Salt Lake City as the olympic host erupted into an internationally-significant story in 1999 and 2000.
The Salt Lake City Weekly along with the Salt Lake Tribune sued the state of Utah for barring liquor advertising. The case dragged on for years in Utah District Court which ultimately rejected their claims. However, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overruled on appeal on July 24, 2001, and liquor advertisements became legal in Utah. In response to this, John Saltas offered a full page ad to the LDS Church so they could explain their position against liquor advertising. The Church had not previously advertised in the paper which was often labeled "anti-Mormon", but they took Saltas up on his offer. On November 29, 2001 the City Weekly published the LDS statement. In the same issue, City Weekly featured its first liquor ad, for Jim Beam. Saltas told the Salt Lake Tribune that the timing was a "coincidence."
In 2001, influential Utah conservative Gayle Ruzicka of the Utah Eagle Forum spoke extensively against the City Weekly. Ruzicka found same-sex personal classified ads and other features distasteful, and she unsuccessfully lobbied to have the newspaper banned from government buildings. She furthermore wanted rules to prevent children from reaching the paper, but was unable to affect change. Instead, the Eagle Forum pushed for a conservative "alternative to the alternatives."
The City Weekly's format was imitated by a start-up conservative alternative weekly called the Utah Weekly in the summer of 2002. This publication, whose name suggested the more conservative politics of the state in relation to Salt Lake City, became plagued by a number of financial problems. Irregular publication ensued as the paper was unable to live up to its "weekly" title. In spite of some conservative's support, the Utah Weekly folded in September 2003 after 70 weeks, having produced only 25 issues. Its owners, Rich Kuchinsky and Mike Weber, were unable to pay writers and creditors.
In October 2002, editor Christopher Smart left the City Weekly for a low-profile but higher-paying news position with Salt Lake Tribune. Saltas named John Yewell as editor, but Yewell was fired within nine months for unspecified reasons. The paper's editorship turned temporarily over to Ben Fulton, a long-time contributor. Later Saltas announced that Fulton's editorship would be permanent.
As the paper gained popularity and staff, the load on John Saltas decreased. In 2003 he retired as publisher naming Jim Rizzi as his successor. Rizzi, with over 20 years of alternative weekly experience, was groomed for the position. Saltas has hired him as a vice president 2002. After being uninvolved with the paper's operations for several months, Rizzi and Ben Fulton asked Saltas to contribute a weekly column. Saltas now writes a light-hearted and blog-like column called "Private Eye" where he talks aimlessly about his favorite Utah Jazz players (especially Carlos Arroyo), his Greek heritage, and jokes that he's soon going to be fired.
The Salt Lake City Weekly is currently available from over 2000 locations and boasts the status "second largest weekday distribution," behind the daily Salt Lake Tribune, but narrowly ahead of the Deseret Morning News. In either case, the city's two dailies have much larger weekend distribution than the City Weekly's once-a-week publication.
Editors
- Pre - 1992: John Saltas
- 1992 - 1996: Tom Walch
- 1996 - Oct 2002: Christopher Smart
- Nov 2002 - Aug 2003: John Yewell
- Aug 2003 - present: Ben Fulton
Publishers
- Pre - Nov 2003: John Saltas
- Nov 2003 - present: Jim Rizzi
The City Weekly and politics
Given its bar-hopping roots, the City Weekly has a liberal, non-Mormon, anti-establishment bias. Some, like Gayle Ruzicka, claim the paper is anti-Mormon and panders to the "homosexual agenda."
The City Weekly also interacts with local politics.
Apart from covering scandals about former Democratic Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini, the liberal paper controversially editorialized against her and her associates. The paper often listed her actions as "misses" in the "Hits & Misses" column on the opinion page.
Attacks on district attorney Neal Gunnarson so upset him that he stole hundreds of copies of the paper from off the racks in 1997. Technically, this is theft because only the first copy of the City Weekly is free; additional copies are one dollar each. The paper believed Gunnarson was being too soft on the Mayor, claiming that his weak prosecution didn't "pass the smell test."
During the 1999 mayoral elections, the scandal-ridden Corradini declined to seek re-election. The City Weekly endorsed Rocky Anderson in a crowded primary. Anderson was an attorney who was once retained by the paper. Facing Stuart Reid, a member of Corradini's administration, Anderson won, but the paper remained neutral during his 2003 re-election.
As of 2004, the City Weekly has published a series of articles criticizing embattled Salt Lake County mayor Nancy Workman. Workman was acquitted of criminal charges for misuse of County funds, although was forced to not seek re-election by the Republican Party. In the ensuing election replacement candidate and developer Ivory Ellis was defeated by Democrat Peter Corroon.
Relationships to other Salt Lake papers
The City Weekly comments extensively on local media through a "media beat" column and letters from the editor.
Of the two daily papers in Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret Morning News, the City Weekly surprisingly values the LDS Church-owned Deseret News for its investigative reporting in spite of its conservative editorial page.
Saltas has mocked the Tribune's byline "Utah's Independent Voice" by calling the paper "Utah's co-dependent voice." The paper, he points out, is published with the same Newspaper Agency Corporation facilities as the Deseret News through the two paper's joint operating agreement. Thus the City Weekly casts the paper as being "less independent than it pretends to be."
The 2002 Tribune acquisition by Dean Singleton, owner of the nation's 7th largest newspaper chain, prompted an exposé. The City Weekly asserted that increased cooperation and expansion of the two daily papers under Singleton's Tribune leadership hurt surrounding paper's viability.
Current features
The City Weekly tends to be geared toward a younger, more urban, and more liberal audience than the area's other papers. Some its more prominent features include its reviews of art films (Scott Renshaw), restaurants (Ted Scheffler), and television (Bill Frost). The owner, John Saltas, writes a train-of-thought column called "Private Eye". The paper has an opinion page which typically has two articles, including one from editor Ben Fulton, and "Hits & Misses". The paper has a satire column called "DeeP end" written by D. P. Sorenson who, among other things, jokingly claims to have been Mitt Romney's missionary companion.
Other syndicated features often seen in free alternative weeklies include the Straight Dope and comics such as This Modern World, the Zippy the Pinhead, K Chronicles and Life in Hell.
The City Weekly also published a yearly Best of Utah guide and the "SLAMMY" Awards, a music guide (see also Music of Utah).