Today we’d like to introduce you to Brian J. Shaw.
Hi Brian, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
I was just coming out of the Air Force at age 28 and was taking a Communications 101 class that was required for graduation for my associate’s degree at SLCC. In the introduction, the professor who was also a former reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune was telling the class about a job opportunity at a student-run newspaper called the Globe that he was restarting after a three-year hiatus.
So he asked us to contact him if we were interested and to include any pertinent experience in writing or the arts.
Prior to my stint in the Air Force, I was a performance poet and artist who had won several awards, was published in several anthologies, and traveled to arts festivals and concerts opening for major label acts. The professor liked my experience and so I was offered an Editor-in-Chief position at The Globe. That day was Sept. 10, 2001. I was asked to report for my first day at the newspaper on Sept. 11; on that day, my life changed forever. I remember looking out toward the Oquirrh Mountains at about 9 a.m. in my living room and watching a BREAKING NEWS…ticker flashes across the lower half of my TV screen. It showed a picture of the World Trade Center with the words A PLANE HAS CRASHED INTO WORLD TRADE CENTER. A few minutes later, another breaking news ticker was scrolling across my TV screen with the words: PLANE CRASHES INTO PENNSYLVANIA CORNFIELD. About 30 minutes later came more information along with a live shot of another plane [this time suspected to have been hijacked] smashing into the World Trade. I just remember going numb and dropping my thermos filled with coffee all over my carpet and hearing my dog bark.
A few seconds later, the phone rang, and so I rushed into the kitchen to see who it was. The caller ID said SALT LAKE COMM COLL on my wall-mounted Uniden phone so I hit the speaker. “Are you watching this on TV?” said the professor on the other line without saying hello, even. “Yes,” I mumbled. “Well, take the day off,” replied the prof.
“Be ready for a long day tomorrow.” That’s how I started in journalism, a brutal and often unforgiving field that took me in just one year from a tiny office in the basement of a community college to one of the top journalism schools in America. It’s taken me from the 2002 Olympic Winter Games where I drank coffee with David Letterman to the wilds of Montana where I interviewed a neighbor of the Unabomber.
For my senior thesis, I wrote about The Salt Lake Tribune/National Enquirer scandal and that story made the prestigious Montana Journalism Review. My passion for storytelling has taken me from the steep slopes at Jackson Hole to the now-defunct and heavily gated West Ridge Academy for at-risk youth and all the way to the bright lights of Hollywood. I can’t say it’s been easy–but it’s certainly provided me with plenty of moments I’ll never forget at age 49. As I sit here waging a never-ending battle with Long Covid symptoms and Chronic Immune Response Syndrome–the same illness afflicting pro hockey player Jonathan Toews–I’m not sure what’s next but I do know that I’ll keep fighting like the Covid zombie that I’ve now become.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
For me, life as a journalist in the early-to-mid 2000s was difficult. The profession was undergoing a tectonic shift in how news was being presented. No longer were stories confined to the messy print of yesterday’s newspapers; anything written could also be cataloged online. Because of this, my career as a journalist in Utah became so obsolete that by 2006 I was forced to write for national Web sites like Examiner.com [later AXS] and TODAY.com in order to make ends meet. I worked there for 11 years, receiving .01 per page view, and also covered major sporting events [Olympics, Super Bowl, etc] for Yahoo! Sports receiving $75 per story.
It was a very humbling and demoralizing time period, one that by the late 2000s forced me to find another line of work. That’s when I came across an ad for a sports reporter covering Utah high schools, so I applied and was accepted in 2009. It was the last journalism job that would pay me an hourly wage. [I’d hold that position until 2013.] In 2016, that newspaper was bought out by a businessman from Idaho who talked me into returning to that publication which was now under new management.
The kicker, however, was that I’d only be paid per story rather than an hourly wage. Instead of covering one city beat I’d now be covering several. I’ve now been at City Journals for seven years, and just won the Utah Sports Story Of The Year award for an article I’d written about Bingham High School’s drill team. The past two years have been very difficult due to this illness that has forced me to give up my house, car, and full custody of my youngest son–in addition to a full-time job I held as a child behaviorist at a local high school. I was awarded short-term disability due to this illness [my status will be reviewed again by a state panel, in late 2023].
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
As a sports reporter, I feel it’s my job to tell stories about these athletes and coaches that either they don’t see in themselves or that they haven’t shared with the public until now. I’m known for writing enterprising stories about local athletes and presenting these ideas on a national stage via essays or news articles; that’s what I did at Examiner.com and at Yahoo! Sports for over a decade. I believe the reason that my Substack, Brian Vs. Utah has become so immensely popular that it focuses on oft-forgotten aspects of Utah athletes that can’t or won’t make it into newspapers or onto radio or television.
I started writing poetry again after a 15-year hiatus after I fell ill in March 2020 and since that time have written and self-published two prose poetry books, COVID ZOMBIES and COVID ZOMBIES 2. COVID ZOMBIES 1 more or less encapsulated my fight for survival from my vantage point, whereas COVID-ZOMBIES 2 was more of a look into the hellscape that others with COVID-19 and Long Covid were experiencing in real-time while I continued my fight for my own survival. [Both books are currently under a full editorial review at a major publishing house.] SPORTZZ FRUM HOME is the title of my new book and it will delve even further into relationships that were cultivated at the height of the pandemic when all of us were stuck at home, it’ll offer a peek into what Utah athletes are really like and how larger media figures like Mina Kimes can sometimes misinterpret or misunderstand these people [an entire chapter will be devoted to Zach Wilson, for example, because he’s disclosed that he has a learning disability and so that has challenged journalists to cover him fairly and accurately at every turn]. I think what sets me apart from others is that I don’t try to be something I’m not.
I’m just a simple curly-haired kid from Magna who liked to float on his back in the Great Salt Lake back in 1980 in his turquoise Hobie Cat swim trunks, and then run onto the beach to his mom where he’d get hugs and then have a picnic lunch on the blanket that she’d laid over the white-hot sands. I realize that with this chronic illness, I may be limited in how far I can see into the distance, so I’m just going to go out and do the best job I know how and try to stay humble and grateful while I’m doing it. If my mom was still here [she passed away in May 2022 due to a stroke] that’s what she would want me to do.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with our readers?
I was told a long time ago by a very famous person that a great leader is someone who takes everyone along for the ride with them and shows them the way; a good leader tells everyone how great everything is.
Pricing:
- Brian Vs. Utah – FREE, DONATIONS ARE WELCOME
- SPORTZZ FRUM HOME ARRIVES SPRING/SUMMER 2023
- COVID ZOMBIES: A LONGHAULERS FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL – $3.99 EBOOK / $13.99 PAPERBACK
- COVID ZOMBIES 2: A LONGHAULERS FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL – $2.99 EBOOK
Contact Info:
- Website: https://brianvsutah.substack.com/
- Instagram: @brianvsutah
- Facebook: Brian Shaw Author
- Twitter: ExUtahSports
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B092T9ZF81/allbooks?ingress=0&visitId=73f367cb-abf1-4a91-85ae-2504a21dfeab
