Heat City

Paul Giblin

Yes, you read that headline right. Pulitzer Prize-winner Paul Giblin is leaving the Arizona Guardian less than a year after he helped found it to go to Afghanistan in a civilian role with the U.S. Army.

His departure from the political news website has been one of the worst kept secrets in Arizona journalism circles in recent weeks, but Giblin had consistently declined to confirm his new position until it was certain.

Late yesterday, he made it official. In a note on the Guardian’s website, Publisher Bob Grossfeld said Giblin would be spending a year stationed in Afghanistan, though he didn’t say exactly what the prize-winning journalist would be doing there. Grossfeld also said Giblin may occasionally pen a letter from overseas for the Guardian site.

“I hope you’ll join with us in not only wishing Paul the best of luck,” Grossfeld wrote, “but also including him in your prayers every now and then.”

It seems no one at Freedom Communications in Arizona is safe from the chopping block this month.

Publisher Renie Scibona and Managing Editor Brian Johnson have been shown the door at the Ahwatukee Foothills News, one of several newspapers in the Phoenix area owned by the California media chain.

Freedom Vice President Julie Moreno sent a memo to staffers last week announcing the layoffs and wishing the two “the best of luck in their future endeavors.”

Renie Scibona

Len Gutman over at the Valley PR Blog made a pretty amazing discovery when he opened up his copy of the Ahwatukee Foothills News on Saturday.

The little community newspaper that survived recent cutbacks by its parent company, Freedom Communications, had printed a full-page ad in the day’s edition essentially begging for reader donations.

“We too have done more with less!” publisher Renie Scibona wrote in the letter to readers, noting how the newspaper has added videos and photo slide shows to its website. “Your loyalty and voluntary contribution will help us continue to bring you one of Arizona’s best community newspapers for years to come.”

The letter was also posted online along with a link at the bottom, urging readers to give whatever they can. In exchange, the paper will give contributors a free classified ad. (A free classified ad, you say?)

Since Heat City broke the news Thursday that executives with Freedom Communications have been pocketing millions in bonuses while slashing jobs and pay for their employees, a lot of you have been asking for the raw data to see who got what and when.

The bonuses have received so much national attention that I’ve created a special page called “Freedom Bonus Central” that lays out information.

There, you can find an embedded Google spreadsheet with all the data, as well as the bankruptcy documents that detailed the bonuses originally. Also, I understand that more Freedom publishers and executives may have received further bonuses as the company sped toward bankruptcy. I’m trying to confirm this and will add the information if and when I do.

Julie Moreno

Jonathan Segal

When Freedom Communications executives Jonathan Segal and Julie Moreno announced Monday the company would be shutting down the East Valley Tribune newspaper at the end of the year, they told staffers it was due, in part, to the bad economic state of the news industry. Freedom was under bankruptcy protection, the Tribune was losing money and the company just didn’t have the wherewithal to keep the Mesa newspaper afloat.

What Segal and Moreno did not say, however, was that behind the scenes of their company’s decline, the two of them continued to do very well financially thanks to hefty bonuses given out to executives this year by Freedom Communications.

In fact, documents filed Oct. 24 in federal court in Delaware show that bonus payments as high as $775,000 were widespread within Freedom’s top ranks as the media chain barreled toward bankruptcy. In all, 19 of the company’s top officers pocketed a combined $2.6 million in the first eight months of 2009 alone.

All the while, those who took the extra cash continued to lay off workers or slash pay at most of Freedom’s 100-plus news outlets nationwide. As consolation, the executives told employees their decisions were difficult and not made lightly.

Brad Armstrong worked as a photographer at the East Valley Tribune for 20 years, and he was more than just a little bit upset when the newspaper laid him off in January along with about 140 other people.

So Armstrong did not expect to feel the way he did when word came down this morning that the paper was shutting down by the end of the year. The Tribune had hurt him, so why should he feel badly about its demise?

His own reaction surprised him more than the closure.