Utah's big media has big bank accounts, but can't match the spirit of Salt Lake's alternative news 

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It's now 2 p.m. on our go-to-press day, and I just learned that our blackberry-growing art director—the incredibly talented Derek Carlisle—is going to put my Free Willy profile and fat face on the cover of this week's City Weekly. I've never been on the cover, that I can recall. Once or twice inside, perhaps. I already feel bad for all of you who may never recover from such exposure.

What is coming in the next 40 issues, starting with this one, is a series of weekly countdowns that will give a summary of highlights of this newspaper—and our city—through the lens of our 40 years of publishing. Our resident historian and reporter, Wes Long, is taking point on the project. He's a fabulous pick, as Wes is new to our office and therefore not yet tainted by all the flattering lies we have not had the chance to tell him.

As it is, he is opening each of our 1,750 or so issues of City Weekly with open eyes and mind. He selects what he thinks are the annual highlights per year and condenses into his weekly piece. I've read some of his upcoming reports, and I believe you'll agree as you come along on this 40-week journey that he's doing a bang-up job of not only dancing us down memory lane, but paying nice tribute to the many reporters, contributors, photographers and columnists who came before him on this weary battleship.

It's bittersweet. Sometimes, Wes will ask me something about a story or episode, and I'll be taken back to the old Midvale offices where we began, slipping into the strange brew of nerves and exhilaration that can only be felt by those who start a business from scratch. A paltry few businesses in any era can claim to be newspaper or magazine publishing companies.

There's my dear, good friend and legendary drinking buddy Greta Belanger deJong, who actually began her holistic Catalyst Magazine a year or two before we began. She really made an impact in Utah, a true pioneer—big respect, snails growing in her tub and beyond. Catalyst stopped printing during COVID-19.

J.R. Ruppel was our first production manager and who founded SLUG Magazine when its moniker was fully emblematic of the rocking Salt Lake UnderGround music scene of the late 1980s. When not sleeping at our office, he worked principally out of The Spoken Word under the old 400 South viaduct near Pioneer Park—with no less a pioneer than Kevin Kirk and his Heavy Metal Shop playing along inside there as well.

JR followed his musical muse to years of touring with Jerry Joseph and the Jackmormons and, thus, sold SLUG to Gianni Ellefson, who later sold it to current publisher, Angela Brown, who maintains the mission despite the raging mosh-pitters of long ago nearing retirement age. There's Richard Markosian, who founded Utah Stories and keeps it going with hard work and hyper-local storytelling. More recently, Cole Fullmer filled the emerging niche of cannabis news with his publication Salt Baked City.

We—too early—lost Richard Barnum-Reece, a witty, funny and fiercely aggressive reporter who for years published Utah Runner and Cyclist. In his off times, he wrote for us, and each story was a memorable one. He had the cleverest pen of all. Then he up and died in 2008, way too young with too many stories untold, rocks left upright.

In Park City, Christopher Smart—current author of the SmartBomb column, which appears weekly on our website—started his newspaper Mountain Times with a bullseye on the politics and money boondoggles that commonly occurred in that Wasatch Back burg. We purchased it from Chris but couldn't sustain Mountain Times.

It was bad timing and a difficult road for us to run two newspaper operations with only one lung.

I'll end up forgetting other notables, but besides Greta and Catalyst, there were other publications here, too, before we ever started. They include Utah Sports Guide, founded by Dan Miller in 1977, and The Event, founded by Allen Tatomer in about 1981. It published for the next 20 years, half of those with new owner James Major at the helm. It stopped publishing in 2001.

Ogden-based Junction City News was founded and published by Ron Atencio. When it ceased publication in 1990, Ron joined this newspaper as our first bona fide art director. Prior to that, there were three "alternative" newspapers in the area, JCN, The Event and us at Private Eye.

We were a distant third to both of them, but we made it to the Trump era, and they didn't. So far, we've not been struck by the MAGA meteor that basically wants to kill independent thought, so maybe they were the lucky ones, not us.

The experiences felt and shared with all of the above is a feeling that we can confidently say will never be felt by the other publishers in town. The katrillionaire Latter-day Saint church, publisher of the unpredictable Deseret News? Hardly. Never met them. However, they office downtown and appear to spend money there.

Paul Huntsman, the millionaire or billionaire (depending on who you ask) guardian and savior of The Salt Lake Tribune who seldom soils his footsy leathers on the streets of Salt Lake City? Harrumph. I do wish I had the half-million-or-so dollars he spends on just his top two editorial and sales executives of the nonprofit that operates the Tribune, however. That would pay for nearly all of our editorial budget annually.

It's closing in on 4 p.m. Maybe it's not too late for me to get Derek to photoshop a tin cup in my hand in the cover photo. S'more, please sir, s'more...

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