Heat City

Terry Goddard

A federal judge today refused to force the owners of the Tucson Citizen to continue publishing the newspaper on a temporary basis, essentially ending any hope the afternoon daily would be sold or its staff would keep their jobs.

U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins declined a request by Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard to intervene in the matter, saying the state was unable to immediately prove the closure breaks federal anti-trust laws. The judge’s decision means Saturday’s commemorative edition of the state’s oldest newspaper was officially its last.

“Along with thousands of Citizen readers and subscribers throughout Tucson, we are disappointed with the judge’s ruling,” said Goddard’s spokeswoman, Anne Hilby in a statement released this afternoon.

Gannett Co., the media chain that owns the Citizen, announced on Friday it was stopping the presses on the 138-year-old publication after a four-month search turned up no viable buyer for the newspaper. The company plans to modify the paper’s website, tusconcitizen.com, into a hub for local commentary, staffed by at least two people, with no news or sports coverage.

ABC 15 in Phoenix announced station-wide cuts the same day as another Arizona media outlet, the Tucson Citizen, announced it was shutting off its presses. Heat City file

Friday, it turns out, was a worse day for Arizona media than we thought. Besides the radical changes at the Tucson Citizen and mass layoffs that went with it, the entire staff at Phoenix’s ABC affiliate, KNXV-TV (Channel 15), learned their parent company will be picking their pockets to help ease steep financial losses throughout the media chain.

ABC 15 staffers will each get one week of pay taken from their paychecks between now and July 31, according to a memo obtained this weekend by Heat City. That amounts to roughly a 10 percent pay cut during that time.

Brian Lawlor

The cuts were ordered by Brian Lawlor, the head of television for the E.W. Scripps Co., which owns ABC 15. In an email to employees on Friday, Lawlor said the cuts are meant to be temporary but executives would “continue to evaluate” the situation over time.

Attorney General Terry Goddard

The office of Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard filed a federal lawsuit late today to prevent the closing of the Tucson Citizen, the state’s oldest newspaper, just hours after its parent company announced it would print its final edition tomorrow.

The lawsuit alleges the closure would violate federal antitrust laws. The Citizen is owned by the Virginia-based Gannett Co., which planned to shutter the newspaper but provide financial backing to and share profits with its largest competitor, the Arizona Daily Star. The lawsuit said the plan essentially amounts to an illegal agreement to end newspaper competition in Tucson.

“Newspaper readers and the Tucson community as a whole will be harmed by the elimination of the historic quality competition that has spurred the Star and Citizen to journalistic excellence,” the lawsuit said.

The attorney general’s complaint also names Lee Enterprises, the owner of the Star, claiming it is taking part in an effort to create a newspaper monopoly in the city. The lawsuit was filed just before 5 p.m. in Arizona’s U.S. District Court.

The Tucson Citizen is scheduled to print its final edition tomorrow and lay off most of its staff after its parent company refused to sell Arizona’s oldest newspaper to interested buyers.

Saying it is “no longer viable” to keep the Citizen alive in print, the Virginia-based Gannett Co., the nation’s largest newspaper chain, opted to fold the hard-copy edition of the newspaper and convert its website into a hub for local opinions, the parent company announced today. The shut down and layoffs come after Gannett reportedly turned down an offer from California investors to buy the newspaper for $500,000, an offer far below the company’s $800,000 asking price.

“Dramatic changes in our industry combined with the difficult economy — particularly in this region — mean it is no longer viable to produce two daily printed newspapers in Tucson,” said Bob Dickey, Gannett’s head of newspapers, in a written statement.

Gannett will continue to own a stake in a special partnership with Tucson’s largest newspaper, the Arizona Daily Star, which is owned by Lee Enterprises. This means the company will continue to help the Star pay for certain costs of producing its own newspaper in return for sharing profits.

May issue of Phoenix magazine

This is good news. Heat City has lost a little steam over the past couple weeks while I have been hard at work on some freelance projects. This means I make a little more money and you get to read my work in more publications.

This month, for example, you can pick up the new issue of Phoenix magazine to find three pieces I wrote. The first is on the new $340 million criminal court tower being built in downtown Phoenix (written prior to the announcement that the Maricopa County sheriff’s and attorney’s offices were conducting a criminal investigation into the project.) A second story is about the many stalled high-rise projects in downtown Tempe — and why some local business owners are happy about it. The third is about the locally-crafted online comic strip, Monster Commute, which is a good read five days a week. None of the stories are online, so you have to buy the magazine or find it at your nearest library if you want to read them. But I’m looking into the possibility of reprinting some of the articles here.

In another arena, I also recently contributed to a new project called MediaCritic. Based out of Arizona State University and launched by Dan Gillmor and some other talented digital journalists, it’s the seed of a project devoted to media criticism that its founders hope will grow into a nationwide conversation on the subject. Currently, it’s focused on Phoenix critics exclusively, but it is expected to eventually branch out to other cities.

I’m all for it and was happy to offer a few exclusive posts to the site. In the first one, I wrote about my experiences covering Phoenix-area media since January. It’s based on the feedback that many of my readers have given me through email and Twitter to stories I’ve posted about local media. The response has been surprising and well worth writing about.