40 years of City Weekly—Volume 9, 1992-1993 

Year 9 was another momentous period for Private Eye. The paper not only won awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and was threatened with legal action from The Salt Lake Tribune, but it was at this point that the paper became a weekly!

"The Private Eye didn't convert to a weekly schedule just because it was there," wrote John Saltas on June 10, 1992. "We did it because our readers, you, demonstrated there is a compelling need for this vehicle in this staid of all markets. You've shown there's a need for a voice in the wilderness, a voice that calls for fairness, a voice that doubts, and a voice that brings other corners of this country into our own little ocean of desert salt and white bread."

With the change in schedule came an eventual change in name. Starting in 1993, the paper was now called the Private Eye Weekly, featuring a new masthead design and additional features, such as Don Rubin's "The Real Puzzle."

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As for what this newly minted weekly was covering, the list was varied and lengthy. Local racists overloaded the switchboard of City Hall over the renaming of 600 South as Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard; disabled rights activists pushed back on state budgetary cuts to Medicaid; the 1992 election came to a head; and the Utah Wilderness Association worked to curb bear baiting in Utah.

Most prominent among this year's stories was an extensive multi-part series by Lynn Packer covering allegations of securities and tax fraud on the part of the energy company Bonneville Pacific along with Salt Lake City Mayor Deedee Corradini's connection to the scandal.

Remembering Vol. 9: In the stands
"Long before the time that the law became my mistress," wrote attorney/Private Eye contributor Ron Yengich, "baseball became my first great love. Derks Field was the place that I spent much of my youth, and have spent much of my middle age, watching the game and attempting to grow up."

Yengich had reason to wax nostalgic about baseball memories in the July 15, 1992, issue. The old ballpark was slated for demolition to make way for a larger facility: Franklin Quest Field (1365 S. West Temple).

Named after a business and not a person, the new ballpark produced "a certain sense of loss as the '90s collided with the '40s," according to Lee Benson in a Deseret News report in 1993.

Ultimately renamed Smith's Ballpark, it remains the home base for the Salt Lake Bees until after the 2024 baseball season. In January 2023, the team announced that it would be leaving the city for a new stadium in the Daybreak neighborhood of South Jordan. Salt Lake City's Ballpark NEXT project is currently in the process of determining what the old space should be used for.

But for many of a certain age, the old grounds on West Temple shall always evoke memories of Derks Field.

"Derks Field isn't a stadium, it's a ballpark; a baseball park, a dream factory, a working museum," wrote Yengich in 1992. "It is sacred ground. For some who walk through the turnstiles, ticket stub in hand, it is filled with the dreams of youth and the ghosts of the past."

In the cell
The name of William Andrews was on the minds and tongues of many in 1992. Facing a July 30 execution date at the Utah State Prison, Andrews had served 18 years on death row for his involvement in a deadly 1974 robbery at the Hi-Fi Shop in Ogden.

With the presence of people still inside the audio store at the time of their planned break-in, Dale Selby Pierre and Andrews—among others—instead took hostages while their driver waited outside. After an unsuccessful attempt at poisoning their captives, three people were ultimately shot to death by Pierre while two others survived with lingering injuries.

"Selby fought his way through the appeals system and lost," recounted John Harrington in the July 1, 1992, issue. "He was executed Aug. 28, 1987, at 1:13 a.m., the first man to die by lethal injection in Utah."

Now, with Andrews' execution date nearing, Harrington wondered whether it was right that Andrews—a black man who did indeed assist in poisoning the victims but who did not fire any trigger—should be facing death while the case of Mark Hofmann, a white man who detonated several bombs amid rising scrutiny of his forgeries, never went to trial, and he was then only a medium-security inmate.

"Every lawyer, including prosecutor David Yocom, said it's impossible to evenly and fairly apply the capital homicide statute," Harrington noted. "Their universal reasoning: The system is run by people, and people are flawed; therefore, the system is flawed."

In the wake of this story, readers commented in appreciation as well as criticism. Earl Dorius (1947-2022), a state's attorney on the Hi-Fi case, took issue with several details that went unreported, while Victor Fontana appreciated the coverage of Andrews' case, having met Andrews at the Utah State Penitentiary.

"Mr. Andrews is a man who carries himself with great dignity," Fontana wrote, "which I believe derives from his coming to terms with himself, his crime, his travels through the legal morass and any higher forces he may have to answer to."

Forty leaders of Christian denominations in Utah issued an open letter to then-Gov. Norman Bangerter (1933-2015) and the Utah Board of Pardons in a plea to halt the impending execution. Finally, Andrews himself sent an open message to "young people" that appeared in the July 29 issue, immediately prior to his execution.

Acknowledging the existence of a "dual justice system" and warning youth against the effect of drugs, Andrews nevertheless expressed regret most of all with himself.

"You know," Andrews wrote, "no one literally forced me to participate in that crime—I participated in that crime because my friends participated in that crime, and I wanted to be accepted, you know, and if I wasn't so stupid, I wouldn't have. My need to be accepted, my need to have friends, the wrong friends, but it was my own stupidity that got me into it."

He concluded his message with a prayer that "healing could begin for the victims and the community as a whole."

Following Andrews' execution, Private Eye contributor Amanda Dickson expressed continued disgust and discomfort with the entire ordeal, particularly in the public clamor for the execution in the first place.

"If we are defined by our actions," she asked on Aug. 5, "then what kind of people are we, who feel such righteous indignation in killing?"

In the comments
"If you have courage, a heart and a brain, / And you've learned what you can from your pain, / And you have self-esteem, / And know how to dream, / Then call me: we'll explore new terrain." ("Seeks Dorothy," June 24, 1992)

"I would hope that Albertsons would reconsider their decision to not carry the Private Eye. If the news content is a bit 'racy' or 'objectionable,' that is the purpose of an alternative newspaper." (Name withheld, July 22, 1992)

"You're all a bunch of liberal geeks who are probably going to get AIDS anyway..." (Anonymous caller, March 17, 1993)

"I am a 16-year-old high school student who really enjoys your paper. ... I have been excited every time that I see a new issue." (Ron Moody, March 24, 1993)

"Please send one year's subscription of The Private Eye Weekly to the Los Angeles Bureau of The Washington Post." (a letter from The Washington Post, Los Angeles Bureau, April 7, 1993)

In the ads
No doubt inspired by the contemporary release of the hit Francis Ford Coppola film Bram Stoker's Dracula, an ad appeared in the Dec. 9, 1992, issue, offering pendants "containing actual earth from the grounds of Count Dracula's birthplace in Transylvania."

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For $40—plus shipping and handling, of course—interested parties could obtain dragon lockets with the promise that for every pendant sold, "$1 will be donated to benefit Romanian children."

"At last!" declared a hand-drawn advertisement for the Nov. 25 issue of the Private Eye, "Cafe Rude is pleased to announce that snooty, pretentious people are now welcome!" Obnoxious idiots would soon be welcome, it promised, "but not quite yet."

A winner in that year's Best of Utah issue for Best Inexpensive Dining, Cafe Rude was well-known for its turkey burgers and vegetarian chili.