"How many sitting Congressmen could get away with boycotting a hometown newspaper for more than three years -- refusing to be interviewed on any topic -- and never face an ounce of criticism?" asks Salt Lake City Weekly editor Holly Mullen. "Rep. Jim Matheson has, and it's time to call him out." She says Matheson hasn't spoken to the paper since August 2005, and attributes the stonewalling in part to coverage of Matheson's brother when he was running for governor in 2004. "The oddest thing about Matheson's tiff with the SLWeekly is that it seems so unnecessary," notes the Salt Lake Tribune's Glen Warchol. "As the highest ranking Utah Democrat, Matheson should be able to find some common ground with a 'progressive' newspaper in the heart of blue Salt Lake City." More from Politico.
Salt Lake Tribune columnist Sean P. Means says he doesn't "like that Savage and others have singled out Utah for their wrath" with a proposed boycott over the Mormon Church's support of California's ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. But Means says he'd "rather engage Savage in this discussion," so he has invited him to come to Utah. Means says he'd even buy drinks for Savage and Salt Lake City Weekly founder John Saltas, who publicly dropped the "Savage Love" column last week, "to let the healing begin."
In the wake of the passage of a same-sex marriage ban in California last week, an effort that was heavily funded by the Mormon church, Dan Savage and others have called for boycotting the state. "Trouble is, all Utahns aren't to blame, nor are all Mormons," writes Salt Lake City Weekly founder John Saltas. "A nonspecific call to boycott is never effective and is fraught with misdirected fire." He concludes that "since Savage hates Utah so much, there's no point in us playing in his sandbox by sending him a regular check." MORE:The Village Voice weighs in on the Weekly's decision. STILL EVEN MORE: Savage has been making the media rounds talking about Prop. 8 this week. Check out his New York Times op-ed, his appearance on The Colbert Report and his takedown of Tony Perkins on Anderson Cooper 360.
The Utah Headliners Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists honored the alt-weekly with six awards in general competition, including three first-place awards, for Minority Issues Reporting, Personality Profile and Review/Criticism.
As many as 1,000 copies of last week's paper were removed from street boxes after an unflattering cover story involving local police officers was published, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. "I do believe they were stolen and, yes, I suspect someone close to the story is behind it," Weekly executive editor John Saltas says. The Tribune notes that this type of thing has happened before: "The alleged theft is reminiscent of an incident in 1997 when then-Salt Lake District Attorney Neal Gunnarson threw a stack of Weekly papers into a trash bin after the paper published an uncomplimentary story about him."
Brandon Burt coined the winning term "describification" for Addictionary's "Writer's Block" contest, which asked folks to create new words pertaining to the recently ended Writers Guild of America strike. Describification, a noun, is defined as "the removal of creative writers from the entertainment industry's talent pool, creating a marketplace void and subsequent explosion of brainless reality programming." Addictionary is "an online open dictionary for words that don't exist in the English language, but perhaps should."
"Why can't I, as a fellow weekly-newspaper guy, muster up much sympathy for the Shepherd Express?," asks Weekly associate editor Bill Frost in response to yesterday's news that Milwaukee's alt-weekly was having some distribution issues involving the local daily (and its free weekly) and coffee giant Starbucks. "Because City Weekly has never been allowed into Salt Lake City Starbucks; at least the Express had a foot in the door for a while," he writes. "Now, just as Salt Lake City residents have for years, Milwaukee-ites will have to sip their overpriced Charbucks while reading an inferior knockoff of a weekly that has an exclusive, paid-for in."
In the annual Society of Professional Journalists Utah Headliners Awards, reporter Ted McDonough took first in two categories: Best Newspaper Reporter and Government Reporting. Other first place finishes for the Weekly: Katherine Biele in Consumer Reporting; Bill Frost in Headline Writing; Ben Fulton in Personality Profile; and Shane Johnson in Criminal Justice Reporting. Winners were announced last Friday night.
Holly Mullen was most recently a columnist at the Salt Lake Tribune, where she resigned in December after one of her columns was pulled by a Tribune editor. She was previously a staff writer at AAN-member papers Twin Cities Reader (from 1990-1993) and the Dallas Observer (1995-1998). Mullen replaces Ben Fulton, who is on a leave of absence, but may return to the paper in a different position, according to City Weekly officials. On her blog, Mullen says she's "crazy-excited" about her new job. "I like the idea of heading up a newspaper that, instead of constantly ruminating and stressing over how to gain readers in the elusive 18-34 age category, tries to attract them with basic, good journalism," she says.
