Advice from a News Director

Wow! Another great interview! I have lucked out as of recent finding talented people willing to share and inspire. I had the privilege of visiting with Spencer Hall, News Director at KSL.com and founder of Salt City Hoops, via email about his challenges, memories, and advice. I have known Spencer for almost 10 years and every time we do lunch I learn something new. I have been envious of his past job covering the Utah Jazz for ESPN, living the dream of any sports enthusiast. Everyone needs to read this. There are a few answers that Spencer shares that I have never thought about and really hit home. Hint: Change is helpful. Enjoy!

Q: What is the most challenging aspect about your job as the news director at KSL.com?

A: The most challenging part of this aspect of my job is finding ways to give good coverage to all the great sporting events, teams, and individuals in Utah — even though I don't have a huge budget. It's tough to give every team or athlete the coverage that they probably deserve. 

Relatedly, it's difficult to decide which events should be covered more than others. It's easy with things like BYU and UofU football, but other events like Jazz games and RSL games are more hit or miss. And don't even ask me about coverage of the Tooele marching band. (If the parents of the marching band kids had their way, we'd run nothing but marching band stories all day every day.)

Q: What is the greatest sports memory you can recall whether it’s you playing or watching?

The Sundiata Gaines Game was one of the most exciting events I've ever covered. LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers were in Salt Lake playing the Jazz and had the game almost completely wrapped up before losing to the Jazz on a last-second shot by the unknown Sundiata Gaines, who had just signed a 10-day contract. The arena went nuts.

Covering the Jazz the night of Jerry Sloan's abrupt retirement was also amazing. Sloan was one of the main reasons I ever became interested in professional basketball and covering him every game night was a dream come true. It was a surreal couple days as we all tried to make sense of the situation and tried to get a complete understanding of all the pieces in very weird and sad puzzle. It's a shame a legend like that went out the way he did, regardless of the reasons. 

Q: Where did the idea of Salt City Hoops come from? Why? How?

When ESPN first launched their TrueHoop contributor network, I already had a relationship with ESPN editor Henry Abbott through work I did for an early basketball blog called Free Darko. Because of my background as a designer and programmer and the Free Darko work, Henry and Kevin Arnovitz asked me to run the Utah Jazz site in the TrueHoop Network. As a side note, it's been cool to see Henry and Kevin move up the ranks at ESPN and see that they're now the head honchos running everything for ESPN.com/NBA.

As for the name, I was clearly influenced by all the "Salt City ______" brands in Salt Lake. A roller derby team called the Salt City Derby Girls had a team member who left great comments on the early incarnations of Deadspin, so that probably stuck in my brain a bit. I narrowly missed (by one letter) accidentally creating a name that also shared initials with my own name (SRH/Spencer Ryan Hall). SCH will have to do. It was tricky to find a name that people could somehow identify with pro basketball in Utah without infringing on copyright or brands owned by the Jazz or the NBA. Five years later, I'm happy with the final result. 

Q: What are your top 3 keys to being successful?

"Stop asking. Start creating. Be useful." That's a motto I stole from a fellow three-named basketball writer named Peter Robert Casey early in my writing career. It's been the best advice I've every received. Every boss, every organization, every client is looking for someone to help them get things done. If you can become known as the kind of person who solves that problem for people, you'll never look for work again. It will always look for you. 

We live in a world with unlimited access to information. If you don't know how to do something, you can jump online or go to a library or make a connection with someone who can teach you what you need to know. After graduating from college I used to find job descriptions online for positions that I thought would be cool — even though they were completely out of my range. I'd go through all the requirements and write down the ones I didn't have or didn't know how to do. Then I'd choose a few and make those my goals for the next week or month or year. This helped me to diversity my skills and allowed me to be flexible with my career. 

Lastly, we're usually an amalgamation of the people we spend time around. I've been lucky to have great friends and family members who have helped me make better decisions, keep my head up when times are tough, and point me in a new direction when I've felt stuck. Choosing the voices we follow makes a huge difference in our mental health and ability to navigate a difficult world. 

Q: What advice would you give to someone who has a blog or an idea trying to take it to the next level?

I'd repeat the "Stop asking / Start creating / Be useful" line. Also, there are great examples all around us of people who have done great things. Most success involves standing on the shoulders of giants. We absolutely live in a copycat world, so starting off with imitation is a great way to start to learn the details of any topic. Soon you'll start to find your differentiating niche; your customizations will become your unique brand. 

Also, anybody who can be any two of intelligent, clever, funny, or beautiful (or represent beautiful), can be wildly successful online — if they can be consistent. Unfortunately, I've found that it's very, very rare for anyone to be able to be even one of those things and also be consistent. Anybody can be hot once, but can they do it for a year? For 10 years? 

This is one of those thoughts that hit home. Am I being consistent enough? Do I give up too early with a new idea? I want to be more determined to take an idea to the end even if it fails.

Q: What were the failures you had prior to your success?

Growing up, I never knew what I wanted to "be" in life. I didn't have the luxury that some have of knowing exactly what kind of a career to follow. While I recognize that it's definitely a first world problem to carry the burden of choice and the paralysis of indecision, it makes it difficult to know what to do. As someone who likes everything and finds the entire world interesting, it's been tough for me to stay in one place and follow a traditional career path. 

Luckily, I've had a lot of support from friends and family that allowed me to follow my interests while I narrowed in on how I could make my mark. I've started businesses that didn't work, tried jobs I didn't like, lost money on all kinds of things, and made a lot of bad decisions. Through it all, I'm lucky to have had the good sense to surround myself with people who help me keep my head up and give me encouragement. It's made all the difference. 

Q: What has been the biggest helping in marketing your business? (twitter, blogging?etc.)

Twitter has been the best thing to happen to creative types and news people since the internet reached the masses. It's allowed me to connect with all kinds of amazing people over the years. Before all that, however, I would email writers or people I admired and was always amazed at how many would write back. Those correspondences have been amazingly helpful in connecting me with people who have opened all kinds of doors for me. 

Like I mentioned earlier, most successful people have revealed their secrets at some point. You can read their book or their column or listed to their TED talk. Most people, however, aren't willing to put in the repetitive hard work that it takes to replicate their methods. It's the reason why we buy a dieting book instead of going for a run, or why we listen to Oprah instead of visiting a neighbor. We know how we want to feel/be, but we try to find ways to avoid the work. I battle my nature on this every single day. 

This was a tough pill to swallow for me. It's great advice. Amazing advice. I tend to live my life through TED. I dream and imagine being on TED but I never do what it takes to on the stage.

Thanks Spencer for sharing some thoughts that most of us would never admit. Thanks for pointing out the elephant in the room. I think we all could take the next step in our careers or lives to make a different or be the person you want to be.