Salt Lake Tribune, SCH Team Up To Enhance Jazz Dialogue

We’re excited to announce a new affiliation with The Salt Lake Tribune!

Since Salt City Hoops launched in 2009, this has been a place for the invested Utah Jazz fan to see the game (and the personalities behind it) a little differently. We’ve always viewed our role in your fan experience as being somewhat unique from what the traditional outlets and other Jazz-focused blogs deliver. We also recognize that some of our best work has reached your eyes and ears specifically because of relationships and affiliations that have made Salt City Hoops more relevant since day one.

With that in mind, I’m beyond excited to imagine what the next era of SCH coverage and analysis will look like as we announce a new partnership with one of my very favorite news organizations and sports pages: The Salt Lake Tribune.

Starting this season, select articles written by SCH’s talented staff will be featured at the Tribune as a means of adding a new dimension to the paper’s coverage and creating more community and dialogue for fans at this exciting moment in Jazz history. We’ll link to said articles from our website, and we’re excited to add new angles to the Tribune’s excellent coverage. 

So why are we doing this?

Above all else, the vision for Salt City Hoops has always focused on two main objectives: to occupy a unique place in your fan experience and to give talented individuals a sandbox to develop and showcase their skills. A relationship with the Tribune will enhance our ability to do both things.

Developing talent

As a charter member of the ESPN TrueHoop family of sites from the beginning, Salt City Hoops instantly had legitimacy and access that differentiated our site even in a space with a lot of places doing really cool things. Writing for SCH had a certain cachet because of that affiliation, and as such this site became a place that amplified some very talented voices. Our alumni list speaks for itself; several past SCH contributors went on to paid positions in the media world, including the Tribune’s own Andy Larsen, previously a longtime editor here who was elemental in building the site, staff and brand of Salt City Hoops.

Those are the stories we’re most proud of here at Salt City Hoops. Our founder, Spencer Hall, went on to work for the Jazz before running a newsroom at KSL.com. Jazz Twitter superstar Angie Treasure covered games for us in 2016 as a stepping stone to managing the club’s social media presence. Ben Dowsett wrote and edited for us for years before moving on to outlets like ESPN, FiveThirtyEight, GQ and Forbes. Those are just a few examples of the people who used their time at SCH to develop their style, sharpen their skills, and pave the way to other opportunities.

We want Salt City Hoops to remain that type of talent factory, a place where we can attract and amplify voices who could be the next wave of Andys, Spencers, Angies and Bens. We’ll continue to offer aspiring writers the opportunity of being featured on our pages. And frankly, it’s even more exciting to have the possibility of being published by The Salt Lake Tribune. This is just a no-brainer in terms of ensuring that contributing at SCH remains a meaningful, coveted entry point for tomorrow’s best sports writers.

This editorial relationship will also give our writers access to some development dialogue as they hone their skills.

A unique voice and role

We’ve always tried to exist in this weird little space in between the traditional beat writers and the blogs — two groups for whom we have immense respect. Both groups are really great at what they do, and we’ve tried to be excellent at our thing. Our goal is to have our smart articles be the smartest, our fun articles be the most fun, and just to generally be the best of both worlds when it comes to capturing the current tenor of the fan base while also valuing editorial quality and objective writing.

Ours is the website that broke the story of Al Jefferson’s unusually large bed and also the one that dives deep into X-and-O analysis and film study. We have published more than a hundred quirky mailbag columns penned with Jimbo Rudding’s signature humor, and we’ve also covered drafts, lotteries and hundreds of Jazz games. We’ve been a destination for erudite fans who want to eat their proverbial veggies with math-heavy analysis, and also for people who are curious about the Jazz’s jersey lineup and record in the bright yellows.

We’re proud of that eclectic legacy, and we’ll continue to aspire to be just a little different from any other place you consume Jazz content. 

Allying with the Trib, also a proudly independent voice in our community, will further ensconce us in that weird real estate where we’re delivering something slightly different from our blogging peers, while also preserving just the right amount of freedom and personality to not quite enter the domain of traditional outlets.

In other words, we get to keep being who we’ve been for a dozen years, only with more connection points.

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On a personal level, it’s a huge thrill to join forces with the Tribune. Andy and I have been friends since his Salt City Hoops days. The man has slept on my couch in Brooklyn and kicked my ass at pickleball. He’s a great person and beat writer. I’m just as excited to team up with Eric Walden and Aaron Falk, two pros I’ve known and respected for years. Their predecessors include several good friends and respected colleagues. In 2003, when I started covering the Jazz on credential for a small Spanish-language weekly, my first real ally was the Tribune beat writer, a frequent press room dinner companion and a generous guide. I was a shy kid writing for a tiny paper nobody had heard of, but Phil Miller went out of his way to help me navigate the complex politics of the media gaggle. As the Tribune torch was passed during my decade-plus on media row, other friendships were forged. Seeing our legacy intersect with theirs is, speaking sincerely, an honor.

But mostly, I’m excited about what this means for the talented people who produce awesome work for Salt City Hoops, and for the talented people who don’t write for us yet but might someday because they’re excited about our growing role in engaging the Jazz fan community. I’m excited to work with our friends at the Tribune to bring more people into that conversation.