My path into journalism was unusual. I’ve always liked numbers, and I was good at math all through school. From 2008 to 2012, I studied mathematics at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. But while I was working on that degree, I became increasingly focused on something else: trying to build a life in basketball writing.
I started as an unpaid blogger. I entered a writing contest for JazzBots, an old content venture ran by UtahJazz.com. After that shuttered, I wrote for SLCDunk, SB Nation’s Jazz site, and later for ESPN TrueHoop affiliate Salt City Hoops. The entry point was my foundation in statistical analysis; I always brought a Moneyball-esque approach to looking at basketball.
I was first credentialed to cover the Jazz for the 2013-14 season through Salt City Hoops. After that season, I was hired by KSL.com, which gave me my first paid professional role in the field. In the summer of 2018, I joined The Salt Lake Tribune.
For years, I covered basketball only. But then, March 2020 happened. I was in Oklahoma City when Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 and the NBA abruptly shut down. I was on CNN that day - there’s no other circumstance imaginable where CNN wants to talk to the Jazz beat writer.
To avoid furloughing me, my editors at the Tribune asked me to pivot from Jazz coverage. I started writing about the numbers surrounding the pandemic - case counts, best practices, vaccination development, and so on.
That work connected with readers immediately. It relied on the same instincts I had always used on the beat - translating complexity, finding the signal in a flood of information, and writing in plain English - but it pushed them into a different subject area and at a much larger scale. I was later named the Society of Professional Journalists’ Best Pandemic Reporter of 2020 for Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
From 2021 through 2025, I worked in a hybrid role. Though still primarily a Jazz beat writer upon the NBA’s return, I also produced data work across a wide range of topics. That included public health, yes, but also economics, religion, transportation, local government and basically everything else under our sun.
Beginning in February 2026, I decided to move into a full-time data writing role at the Tribune. I still love sports, basketball especially, but it’s been extremely fun to allow my curiosity to run wild elsewhere.
If there’s a throughline in all of it, it’s this: I like taking complicated questions, working to understand them myself, and then sharing what I’ve learned with anyone willing to go along for the ride.