By Shaun Delliskave | [email protected]

Editor’s note: this series highlights the writers behind the stories found here every month.

For a newspaper everyone in Taylorsville gets for free, it receives top-dollar reporting from one of Utah’s best government and local life journalists. In June, Taylorsville Journal reporter Carl Fauver was honored by the Utah Headliner’s Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists as Best Newspaper Reporter (2nd Place Division B) and best sports non-deadline reporting (2nd Place Division B).

“What I absolutely love about my job is, we are not assigned a story; I go out and find something interesting. I love that every day is a challenge of what I am going to cover this month,” Fauver said.

This isn’t Fauver’s first, nor likely his last, recognition of his news career, which has spanned several decades in the communication business. He first got the journalism bug writing for the Eisenhower Junior High School newspaper “Generally Speaking” (get it, Eisenhower “General”-ly speaking).

As a student at Cottonwood High School, he wrote sports articles for the school newspaper, the “Colt Round-up,” and was an announcer on the KOLT radio station. He ran for student body president but failed to advance past the primary election, so he mobilized his supporters to do a write-in campaign after discovering sophomores felt unrecognized. He broke down the student phone number list and passed it out to his volunteers.

“I said, ‘I need you to call those 30 sophomores and encourage them to vote for me,’” Fauver said. “We had Monday night to do that, as the final vote happened Tuesday. I think the sophomores were flattered they were getting a call at home.”

He pulled off that coup and was elected as a write-in candidate.

Fauver’s high school experience profoundly impacted his career choice to become a broadcaster. His dream was to take over Bill Marcroft’s “Voice of the Utes” sportscaster job. So his radio production instructor, Edwina Alexander, recommended he attend Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon, which had a reputable broadcast program.

While he was at Linfield, he walked on to play on the football team, but after helping out at the college radio station, the play-by-play sports anchor convinced him to drop the sport and help in the broadcast booth. Fortuitously, the Linfield football team played for and won the NAIA Division 2 championship in 1982. By then Fauver was the Wildcat’s play-by-play voice and called the game over the radio.

Armed with a bachelor’s degree and a load of demo tapes, Fauver returned to Utah and received a master’s degree in communication from the University of Utah. While Marcroft was far from done calling games for the University of Utah Utes, Fauver was offered the opportunity to be the voice of the Utes—the Uintah High School Utes, that is.

In 1985, Fauver’s first job out of college was as news and sports director for Vernal radio station KVEL.

“I go out there. I’m totally wet behind the ears; I kind of padded my resume a little. I mean, I had done some news before, but I had maybe written 20 news stories in my life. And my first day on the job, there was a murder in town,” Fauver said.

Fauver survived that tough first day and broadcasted in Vernal for the next few years. Then, after a change in radio station management, he found himself wanting to return to the Salt Lake Valley and took a part-time weekend radio job with KSL.

Eventually, Fauver became a full-time news reporter and covered sports. He reported courtside at Utah Jazz games when John Stockton and Karl Malone were up against Michael Jordan and Shaquille O’Neal.

After eight years, Fauver decided to leave the fast-paced world of broadcasting and seek a public relations job. He spoke with Salt Lake County Commissioner Brent Overson about becoming the communication director at the county mayor’s office. He got the job and then subsequently took a job in the private sector. Ironically, Fauver now covers Overson’s wife, Kristie, who is the mayor of Taylorsville.

Unable to kick the broadcasting bug, he returned to KNRS for a three-year stint as a newsanchor, before retiring for good in 2016. Still, he could not hang it all up and has been with the City Journals ever since, covering Taylorsville and Murray stories.

In addition, he supports his wife Patti by writing the newsletter for her organization, the American Backflow Prevention Association. With his wife, Fauver feels he has obtained his greatest satisfaction: their four children, Sara, Hana, Alex and Carl. Three of the four were West Jordan High School valedictorians in 2012, 2015 and 2018. His oldest, Alex, was third in her 2004 graduating class.   

“That is the most important thing to me,” Fauver said. “I take great pride in them and my two grandkids, Jack and Isla.”