Salt Blog is Dead - Long Live Salt Blog

[Big News] Salt Lake City Weekly has launched an all-new website at CityWeekly.net, replete with its own blog section. The Salt Blog as been reborn as an aggregation of the latest entries from separate News, Food, Music, Movies, TV and more blogs. This BlogSpot will remain for the time being as an archive of our January 2007-February 2009 entries; now, join us at:

(Not) According to Jim--D.C. Version

[Political pouter] Well, Utah's predictable right wing posters may object to City Weekly calling out Rep. Jim Matheson, (D-kind of, Utah) for refusing to talk to our reporters for more than three years. But someone in Washington D.C.--the other place where Matheson hangs out--noticed and let people know about it.

(Holly Mullen)

Dan Savage on KRCL Tonight

[More Prop 8] Tonight from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., KRCL-90.9's Troy Williams will host a conversation with Dan Savage*, editor of Seattle alternative newspaper The Stranger and a nationally syndicated sex advice columnist, on the station's public affairs program RadioActive.

Readers of City Weekly and Salt Blog might recognize the name. Savage was one of the first gay activists in the country to urge a total boycott of Utah (yeah, that's right. The whole state) the day after Californians passed Proposition 8 which bans same-sex marriage in their state. As is well-known by now, with the steady urging of the LDS hierarchy, members of the Mormon Church donated about $22 million to help pass the measure. Many of the biggest spenders live right here in Utah.

CW president John Saltas, who goes back years with Savage in the tight-knit community of altie papers, chose to drop Savage's sex column, which we had been running online. Saltas has explained his stand on the blanket boycott that Savage and others have been pushing, here and here.

I ran into Williams on a Main Street sidewalk earlier today. He promises the show will be lively. Williams, who is gay, told me he doesn't like the notion of a Utah boycott, nor does he support Saltas in his choice to drop Savage. "I want to heal the community," he told me, waving his arms in that big, expansive way of making a happy globe. Tune in, or better yet, call the show and be heard.

*That's Savage in the pix, though god knows how old that shot is. (Holly Mullen)

Filthy Rag!

During my shift helping to man the City Weekly table at the Utah Humanities Book Festival at Library Square, a lady rolled up in a styled-out electric wheelchair and shared her opinion of our paper: "I'd look at City Weekly more often if it wasn't so FILTHY!" she said, and then smugly rolled away. I'm still not sure if she was talking about City Weekly content or ink smudges from the paper. (Ted Scheffler)

Kopykat Korner

[Media Competition] Three days before this morning's edition of The Salt Lake Tribune, there was City Weekly.

We published this story on October 1.

They published this story on October 4.

As City Weekly intern Joseph Bateman points out in his piece, there are afficionodos of electric car and other alternative energy-fueled vehicles all over the state of Utah. It's practically become an industry for weekend mechanics and alternative energy geeks. So why would the Trib pick the same main subject, with essentially the same photos, to profile as CW did?

I mean, we're flattered over here on our little slice of Main Street. But usually the mainstream media tries to change up their derivative stories just a smidgen. (Holly Mullen)

City Weekly: Governor Approved!

[Media] Wha? Utah Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. told KUER 90.1's RadioWest yesterday that City Weekly is "the only reliable newspaper in the state." Sarcasm? Pure, scalding truth? We'll choose the answer we like. And check the "I'm waaay liberal!" mini-rant that follows in the handy player below:



(Bill Frost)

City Weekly Explained Dutcher for You

[Ex-Mormon Filmmakers] Of course it simply isn't a story until the Los Angeles Times says it is, but City Weekly's film critic Scott Renshaw plowed this ground about Utah filmmaker Richard Dutcher nearly a year ago with this cover feature. In the interim, Dutcher's obviously been interviewed a few times, as evidenced by the similarity of quotes (as in, "What if it isn't true?") in first, CW, and then the Times. (Holly Mullen)

For the "Alternative" Bride

[City Life] City Weekly ... what every smart Salt Lake City bride is reading!

A Salt Blog hat tip to photographer Tawsha Hannig. (Holly Mullen)

Oooh, So Salacious

[Media] Oh, how I love to see the words "salacious," "Mayor Ralph Becker" and City Weekly all together in one letter to the editor.

And a tip of the Salt Blog hat to Salt Lake City letter writer Meredith Shaw, who clearly has adopted the Utah art form of passive-aggressive communication. Is she handing our paper a compliment? A criticism? Both at once? Who knows. The nature of too much discourse in Utah is that you never quite know where a person is coming from.

Oh well. Any pub is good pub.

Anyway, here at our little paper we'll continue to keep an eye on the Becker administration. We figure the new mayor, with nearly four months of work under his belt has long passed the obligatory Honeymoon Period. If press scrutiny of elected officials counts as "even salacious," we're guilty as charged.

BTW, no one does salacious better than competing New York tabloids the Daily News and New York Post, top right. Now those are headlines! (Holly Mullen)

Another Shameless Promo

[Wet Kiss] Gavin Sheehan, who works in the control room at KUTV-channel 2, also keeps a lively blog where, dig this: He actually goes out and interviews live human beings. And he takes pictures, too.

Today, he posted an interview with yours truly, which also previews our big, fat Best of Utah issue scheduled to hit the street this Wednesday/Thursday. Plus, he shot photos of our extremely attractive Main Street offices, some staff members and other paraphernalia.

Don't worry. I gave nothing away about our BOU issue. You'll have to wait like everyone else.

BTW, the photo to your upper right is just a random shot of the City Weekly 2004 BOU cover that I like.

Read Gavin's post for yourself at "Gavin's Underground." (Holly Mullen)

Our Alternative Reality

[SLC Media] The last time City Weekly's Bill Frost blogged about the local mainstream media's occasional practice of lifting stories from CW with nary a hint of attribution to the original source or an attempt to write their articles a bit differently, a poster gave him a raft of shit for being thin-skinned.

Well, critics, bring it on.

Today, as I scanned my morning Salt Lake Tribune, I found two stories that CW published last week and the week before that. First, CW political columnist Katharine Biele was the first local journalist to dig up the parallels between Oklahoma's ultra-punitive immigration legislation, which Utah legislators have scrambled this year to copy. Biele pointed out that one conservative Oklahoma state legislator this year has had serious reservations about the 2007 law, and is sponsoring a series of repeals of the harshest provisions. The same source, in the same story, showed up today in the Tribune. Two weeks after CW published it.

CW staff writer Ted McDonough five days ago blogged here noting how Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker had changed his position on a bill he originally fully supported with state Senate sponsor Chris Buttars to seal discipline records of police officers from the public. Today, the same story showed up in the Tribune.

Do we protest too much? Maybe. We're the little guy in town. We're not always first againt those big, bruising dailies, but when we are we might just tell you. Hey. If we don't promote our work, then who will? (Holly Mullen)

Name That City Weekly Employee

[Unsolved Karaoke Murders] This video was shot at Burt's Tiki Lounge during a Sunday night karaoke carnage. Please do what you can to bring this person to justice--name that City Weekly employee:

Crime Scene Footage

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(Bill Frost)

Happy Everything

[Joy] We at City Weekly are winding down for Christmas, signing off on our last few pages for our Dec. 27 issue. It's late afternoon, the Winter Solstice is upon us. The light outside our Main Street window is shifting; the snow is glistening with the last bit of daylight.

We're just beginning to drink shots of cranberry vodka. Soon, we'll pop corks on the champagne.

We started this blog a couple of years ago. It was mostly up to Web master Bill Frost and a few plucky writers to feed it. They worked hard. Now we're all trying to keep it going. But we may take a fews day off for some holiday cheer. We'll be back.

Thanks for hitting on us. Oh, that didn't sound good. Thanks for reading us. All the better if you write a few comments in reaction to our posts. We like social intercourse.

Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. All. Of. It. (Holly Mullen)

The Spoojies

[AWARDS] City Weekly cleaned up at the 2007 Society of Professional Journalists' Utah Headliners Awards, this year held in a West Jordan Chili's. Follow the link for the entire list of winners. Congrats to everyone, but mostly us (Excellence in Humility was not a category).

Playoff Fever

City Weekly grand poobah John Saltas sends out a question to the staff every week; the best (or at least most interesting) wind up in the Staff Box below his Private Eye column. This week, he's throwing it out to everyone--please feel free to leave your own answer in the Comments section:

Do you believe in superstitions or random theory? If so, what are you doing to influence the outcome of the Utah Jazz and San Antonio Spurs playoffs? (John Saltas)

Read Saltas' Private Eye column tomorrow afternoon at SLWeekly.com.