That Zion Connection

[Media] Here at Salt Blog, we love, love, love tenuous local connections to national stories. So imagine the fun when a press release for orato.com landed in my e-mail box today, citing not one but two of its top 10 citizen-journalist stories of 2007 with a link to Zion.

Number 3 story on orato's list is a first-person story by Duane "Dog" Chapman, of A&E's Bounty Hunter fame. But that's not a local story, you say. Ha. City Weekly's Ted McDonough was the first to reveal that a Salt Lake City female bounty hunter is on the short list to replace Dog in a pilot that may pass as a replacement for BH. Hence, the Utah angle! Careful readers will know that Chapman was called out last fall for a racist rant against his son's girlfriend, caught on audiotape, and has been in the doghouse ever since.

But wait, there's more. Orato's sixth story of the year is by Pleasant Grove's own Todd Herzog, winner of last season's Survivor China. City Weekly's Bill Frost has kept the laser beam on this story--reminding the free world (when other Utah media wouldn't) that Herzog is yup, a gay Mormon.

(Holly Mullen)