Derick Fox
Derick Fox is a sports journalist and photojournalist at KUTV 2 News whose work ties game results, roster decisions, and league developments into clear, tightly reported narratives around soccer, hockey, and emerging football properties. He pairs live-event coverage with recurring analysis formats and original photography, giving readers both the immediate outcome and the broader storyline behind Utah’s professional teams. Alongside his sports beat, he also handles fast-turn breaking news and public safety coverage, applying the same concise, status-focused style to incidents that affect local residents and infrastructure.
Real Salt Lake and U.S. soccer coverage
Fox devotes a substantial portion of his reporting to Real Salt Lake, following the club through match results, roster choices, and player milestones. He covered Real Salt Lake midfielder Diego Luna’s omission from the announced U.S. roster for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, framing the story around the significance of the decision for local supporters and the player’s recent form. His match reports track the rhythm of a season, including a 4–3 loss to FC Dallas that followed a 1–1 draw with Minnesota United, and a later 3–0 win over the Houston Dynamo fueled by a second-half surge after a first half without a shot on goal.
He follows young talent closely, writing on Utah-native forward Zavier Gozo’s path from club play to the U.S. Men’s National Team, first through a detailed transfer story on Gozo’s move to Crystal Palace and then through a separate piece on his national team call-up for pre–2030 World Cup exhibitions. Fox extends his soccer lens to the national stage, documenting the U.S. Men’s National Team’s first knockout-stage win in 24 years, a 2–0 victory over Bosnia-Herzegovina that he situates within the team’s progression toward a high-profile matchup against Belgium. His work also includes “Talkin’ Real” installments that recap Real Salt Lake’s form and marquee nights, such as home dates against San Diego and a high-attention match hosting Lionel Messi and Inter Miami at America First Field, where he highlights both the result and the atmosphere.
Across these pieces, his distinguishing trait is a focus on how individual matches and roster moves add up over time, presenting Real Salt Lake and U.S. soccer as evolving projects rather than isolated events.
Utah Mammoth and new professional leagues
Beyond soccer, Fox covers the rise and consolidation of other professional teams and leagues, particularly the Utah Mammoth and spring football’s United Football League. His reporting on the UFL’s decision to add a Utah expansion team ahead of the 2028 season explains the league’s timeline, the parallel expansion in Oklahoma, and the choice of America First Field as the home venue, linking the new franchise to existing soccer infrastructure and fan habits.
In hockey, he chronicles the Utah Mammoth’s return for a third NHL season, centering his story on the team’s home opener and the free outdoor celebration held outside the Delta Center.
That piece dwells on the fan-facing elements - timing, accessibility, and the sense of a kickoff party - as much as on the team’s on-ice expectations, underscoring his interest in how teams cultivate their audience. Taken together, these articles show him as a consistent observer of how new or growing franchises establish themselves, blending venue details, event planning, and league strategy into straightforward coverage of Utah’s expanding professional sports landscape.
Breaking local news and public safety incidents
Fox also serves as a breaking-news reporter for the station, covering emergencies and public safety issues with brief, outcome-oriented stories.
He reported on a Riverdale home that became fully engulfed in flames, sending multiple people to local hospitals in critical condition, focusing on the condition of those injured and the basic status of the scene. In another incident, he detailed how a man was hospitalized after falling while rappelling with a one-year-old near a trailhead in Littlefield, Arizona, emphasizing the circumstances of the fall and rescue.
His coverage of a cyberattack on Direct Communications Utah chronicled a multi-day internet outage in Eagle Mountain and the eventual restoration of service, clearly marking the disruption and the point at which normal connectivity resumed. He has written on a reported bomb threat that prompted evacuations at a business in West Haven, concentrating on the closure of the area and public safety measures rather than speculation. In a separate traffic piece, he explained how the driver involved in a deadly hit-and-run in downtown Salt Lake was located and was cooperating with the ongoing investigation, summarizing the investigative turn and its implications for the case.
Alongside these, his reporting on a measles outbreak threatening the region’s elimination status and accounting for nearly 700 cases shows the same direct approach to public health, with attention to case counts and official assessments of risk. Across these stories, his distinguishing feature is a restrained, status-driven style that keeps to verified developments: who was hurt, what was disrupted, and how authorities and services responded.
Photojournalism and format-driven storytelling
Fox’s work is consistently visual, with many of his sports stories accompanied by his own credited photographs from games and events.
Match reports and features include action shots of players such as Diego Luna, Zavier Gozo, and visiting stars like Lionel Messi, often framed in moments that illustrate the narrative he is writing - key attacks, celebrations, or the general intensity of the game. His captions identify venues, opponents, dates, and roles, reinforcing the factual spine of his coverage while giving readers a clear sense of place. He also leans on recurring segments like “Talkin’ Real,” which provide a familiar format for analysis and discussion around Real Salt Lake’s trajectory, complementing his straight game recaps with conversational breakdowns.
The combination of original imagery, tight captioning, and structured series pieces marks his style: he builds simple, factual stories that are anchored by what he himself has seen and shot at the field, rink, or event site.
4 more sports journalists.
Adair Reid
Adair Reid is a sports columnist for The Cavalier Daily who covers Virginia men’s programs with a blunt, fan-aware voice that treats them as long-term projects rather than one-off games. He focuses on trajectory, legacy and risk, using opinion columns to question coaching decisions and program strategy while grounding his arguments in recent results, records, tournament performance and roster realities. Men’s lacrosse is a recurring subject, and his work on the program’s coaching change shows how he uses a single decision to examine overall health, standards and competitive standing. He frames games in terms of stakes, identity and institutional expectations, emphasizing postseason implications, recruiting, national perception and alignment with a championship standard. He writes mostly in the first person only when needed, keeps the spotlight on institutional choices and brings analysis-first, evidence-based judgment to Virginia’s flagship men’s teams.
Adam Stern
Adam Stern covers the business of motorsports and combat sports at Sports Business Journal, focusing on how sponsorships, media deals and new events reshape racing and fighting. His beat includes NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula 1, NHRA, rallycross, UFC and boxing. He tracks brands, broadcasters, manufacturers, promoters and streaming platforms, with reporting on sponsorship strategy, rights deals, original content, series growth, team projects and technical regulations. He examines how Cadillac’s Formula 1 entry supports broader marketing aims, how F1 Academy builds commercial momentum and whether new MMA promotions can challenge UFC. His work includes short speed reads on deals and longer features on multi-party investments. He reports on the money and strategy behind the action, treating motorsports and combat sports as connected marketplaces shaped by branding, dealmaking and media innovation.
Albert Burneko
Albert Burneko writes about how systems of power bear down on ordinary people, using sports, politics, technology, food, and domestic life as entry points. He is an assignment editor and writer at Defector and part of its founding ownership group. His politics and capital reporting examines how policy, policing, and public rhetoric turn into harm for specific people, centering victims and vulnerable people. He also covers artificial intelligence, media criticism, and technology’s effects, asking who benefits and who absorbs the costs. His domestic writing focuses on parenting, bodily discomfort, and everyday frustration. His recurring Chefector column turns cooking failures into comic studies of impatience, ego, and routine. He writes sharp reported essays, first-person dispatches, mock explainers, and sports-adjacent guides. His work combines moral seriousness, comic voice, close attention to ordinary life, and a focus on how people live under larger systems.
Albert Samaha
Albert Samaha is a sports investigative reporter who uses games to examine how power, money and culture shape players, workers, fans and communities. He works in The Washington Post sports section, covering global tournaments, migration, fan culture, sports betting, match-fixing, ownership, NIL money, football safety, participation gaps and the changing culture of women’s basketball. His reporting connects events on the field to decisions in boardrooms, betting markets, government offices and law enforcement. He previously reported for BuzzFeed News and wrote for the Village Voice, San Francisco Weekly and the Riverfront Times. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, Rolling Stone, The New York Times and The Paris Review. He writes long, deeply reported stories that combine narrative scenes, data analysis, public records, medical records and other documents.