Twenty years into its underdog run, a new publisher guided City Weekly through tumultuous times. 

In 2003—as Salt Lake City Weekly approached its 20th birthday—the times, they were a-changin'.

The country was reeling in post-9/11 divisions and anxieties, increasingly uneasy over deteriorating conditions in Iraq. Utah and Salt Lake City were settling into post-Olympics visibility, with the state's reputation shifting from that of a quirky backwater filled with religious nuts to ... a quirky backwater filled with religious nuts where you could at least order a goddamned drink.

The media was increasingly post-internet, and while dark clouds were appearing on the horizon, an impending economic collapse had not yet arrived to rain on the parade and decimate the news industry. And, most surprisingly of all, City Weekly was post-John Saltas ... sort of.

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• Former City WeeklypublisherJim Rizzi

"After ordering a round of tequila shots, City Weekly owner John Saltas blew away staffers Nov. 14 when he passed the torch of publisher to Jim Rizzi, the paper's associate publisher and vice president of sales and marketing," Jake Parkinson wrote in the Media Matters section on Nov. 20, 2003. "'It's time,' Saltas said. 'City Weekly has become more than a paper, it has become a company. That has not been an easy thing for me to adjust to.'"

Rizzi, a San Francisco transplant who'd bounced around the American West working for several New Times publications, had never been to Utah before he made the move to join CW. And while the SLC and San Francisco media markets "could not be more different," Rizzi said the decision worked out "perfectly."

"It wasn't hard to be 'alternative' in Utah," Rizzi said. "It was really fun. It was exciting."

Rizzi said that prior to Utah, he had never lived anywhere with such a stark predominance of one type of people, that being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It went beyond seeing Utah as a "conservative," or "religious" state, he said, in that the spoken and unspoken influence of the church was an ever-present fact of life.

But that influence was also changing, with loosened liquor laws inviting new and larger business interests to the Wasatch Front and with an outspoken liberal firebrand—and easy editorial foil—leading the capital city.

"I remember Rocky [Anderson] was mayor back then—we were poking at him a lot," Rizzi said. "It was the beginning of the transition away from the private club format of the bars. They were opening up a little bit."

Rizzi remarked on the unique challenge of covering the Latter-day Saint church—how its political and economic power demands scrutiny but how its cultural omnipresence creates lines that shouldn't be crossed. As an outsider to the local media environment, Rizzi said he valued his partnership and friendship with John Saltas, who Rizzi described as "hands down" the best person he's worked with, even though that friendship involved eating more Greek food than Rizzi ever cared to.

"It was kind of a good fit. [Saltas] came up on the editorial side, and I came up on the business side," Rizzi said. "He knew the market inside and out. He was the expert at how to manage the Mormon situation."

And much like how Private Eye/City Weekly was born out of the constraints of Utah liquor laws, it was during Rizzi's time at the paper that the Utah Beer Festival was launched. True to form, it challenged protocol and pushed through new loopholes in the state's laws, as nothing like it had ever been tried before.

"What's more unique to Utah than the damned liquor laws? That's what led us to it," Rizzi said.

Held at Washington Square around the City & County Building, the original beer fest involved City Weekly first purchasing all of the beer, then coordinating with breweries to distribute their own product back to attendees. As cumbersome as that was, the arrangement was the result of considerable discussion and negotiation with the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services (née "Control").

"It was illegal for them to sell to the public directly—I don't remember the specifics," Rizzi said. "Everybody at the DABC was kind of scratching their heads, trying to figure it out with us."

Rizzi said he didn't have much hope that City Weekly would be allowed to hold the festival, and he again credited Saltas as "instrumental" in navigating the regulators.

"They let us do it," he said, "with a lot of restrictions, but they let us."

Things were arguably as good as they had ever been for City Weekly. A new printer in Ogden modernized the production and printing process; a prominent location on Main Street overlooking Gallivan Station flexed at a time when The Salt Lake Tribune and Deseret News had fled from downtown, and a staffed-up newsroom was kicking ass and taking names.

But then the housing bubble popped, and the country entered a crippling recession, and the warning lights flashing at every newspaper in the country switched to a full-throated alarm bell.

"It's always more fun when we're winning, and we had a good run there for a while," Rizzi said. "It's a lot easier to do stuff if you have a positive cash flow."

Rizzi left City Weekly, abruptly, in 2012, with Saltas stepping back into the role of publisher. In the Tribune's report at the time, Rizzi said that CW was doing better than many of its peer papers, but that the alternative news business simply wasn't as rewarding as it had been in the past.

He reiterated that sentiment in a recent interview, saying that it became depressing to go to work after experiencing some of the highest points at both City Weekly and the broader news environment.

Now living in California and no longer working in media, Rizzi gave one more tip of the hat to John Saltas and City Weekly for staying in the fight after all these years.

"It was hard for me to see the industry decline," Rizzi said. "[Saltas] has weathered that storm like I would never have been able to."

Today, Saltas is as complimentary as ever for Rizzi and the time they worked together.

"Jim was always regarded as one the best in our industry," Saltas Said. "His impact on City Weekly and in this city was immense. I miss our coffees."