# Source: "Why I'm Building Utahn" — founder's essay, July 2026 **Type:** source **Status:** Useful **Confidence:** Medium **Source Type:** official-page **URL:** https://utahn.com/why-im-building-utahn/ **Publisher:** Utahn, LLC **Retrieved:** 2026-08-12 **Raw:** raw/utahn-why-im-building-utahn-essay/2026-08-11-9233610066bf.txt **Updated:** 2026-08-11 **Relates:** cites [Utahn](utahn.md) · https://greatutah.work/pages/utahn.md · https://utahn.com/why-im-building-utahn/ ## Summary [Clint Betts](clint-betts.md)'s founding essay for [Utahn](utahn.md), published 2026-07-26 (last updated 2026-08-02 per the article's own timestamps). It is the document that put the publication in front of a general audience and sets out the founder's public case for the publication. Two-thirds of it is literary autobiography (Orwell, Hemingway, Thompson, Stegner). The load-bearing third is a case that Utah's newsrooms have shrunk while the state grew, plus four commitments and one self-disclosed conflict of interest. ## Useful Claims - **The stated funding position:** "Utahn has no investors." The essay makes no other statement about where money comes from — no revenue figures, no backers, no budget. - **A self-disclosed conflict of interest.** Betts states in the essay that he is the CEO and co-founder of [Silicon Slopes](silicon-slopes.md), that he "helped build a fair amount of what this journal intends to spend years examining," and that Utahn will cover Silicon Slopes companies and issues. He does not mention any other business interest. - **The decline case Utahn is built on**, as the essay states it and attributes it: Medill's researchers found the steepest percentage losses in newspaper employment nationwide occurred in three states, one being Utah; the Salt Lake Tribune went from 148 newsroom staff in 2011 to about 60 by 2019 (the year it converted to nonprofit status) and has grown since, while most newsrooms have not; the Deseret News cut 43% of its staff in a single day in 2010; three Utah papers have closed since July 2024, including the Wasatch Wave of Heber City after 136 years; KUER and PBS Utah cut a tenth of their combined staff in January after federal public-media funding was rescinded. These are the essay's figures with the essay's attributions, not independently checked here. - **The growth-versus-coverage framing:** the essay states Utah's technology cluster produced $29.2 billion in 2010 and $69.8 billion in 2025, and that prices in Utah rose 39 percent over the same stretch — again, the essay's figures, linked in the original to third-party sources. - Betts states that he sat for a year on the Salt Lake Tribune's inaugural nonprofit board. - The essay repeats the charter's core commitments in plainer language: no editorial board, no candidate endorsements, show the work, link to primary sources, keep a public archive of every correction. ## Verbatim > "Utahn has no investors. We show our work. We link to primary sources. When we summarize coverage from other outlets, we link to the original. When we get something wrong, we fix it in the open and keep a public archive of every correction." > "We will also tell you where we stand because you deserve to know who is providing you with the information. In that spirit, now is as good a time as any to mention that I'm the CEO and co-founder of Silicon Slopes. I helped build a fair amount of what this journal intends to spend years examining. I know the people in those rooms, and I have made the arguments they make. Utahn will cover Silicon Slopes companies and issues, and when it does, you should read that coverage with this in mind." > "The Salt Lake Tribune, whose inaugural nonprofit board I sat on for a year, employed 148 newsroom staff in 2011 and about 60 by 2019, the year it converted to nonprofit status. It has grown since. Most newsrooms have not." > "The Deseret News cut 43% of its staff in a single day in 2010." > "The state's technology cluster produced $29.2 billion in 2010. In 2025 it produced $69.8 billion. Over the same stretch, prices in Utah rose 39 percent" > "The state of Utah got bigger and richer while the number of people covering its leaders and the impact of their decisions shrank." > "Clint Betts is Utahn's publisher. He's also the co-founder and CEO of Silicon Slopes." ## Reliability Notes Self-reported tier, and specifically a **founder's manifesto** — the genre with the widest gap between what it asserts and what it evidences. It is strong evidence of Utahn's stated intentions and of Betts's own account of his position; it is not evidence that any of it is so. The essay's Utah-newsroom figures are all links to third parties (Medill, Poynter-style trade coverage, the papers themselves) rather than the essay's own reporting. They are recorded above with their attributions and have **not** been re-derived from the underlying sources; a page that leans on them should chase the originals. "Utahn has no investors" is a claim about a private company's capital structure made by that company's founder, with no filing, registration, or third-party record behind it. It is the load-bearing sentence in the essay's ethics argument and the least checkable one on this page. See [Utahn](utahn.md) Open Questions. **No archive snapshot exists** — the Internet Archive has never crawled this publication (its most recent `utahn.com` capture, 2022-03-21, is a domain-for-sale parking page). The `**Raw:**` capture is the only copy outside the live site, and the article's own header already shows it was edited once after publication. ## Related Pages - [Utahn](utahn.md) - [Clint Betts](clint-betts.md) - [Silicon Slopes](silicon-slopes.md) - [Source: Utahn Editorial Charter](utahn-editorial-charter.md)