Heat City

Patti Epler

Paul Giblin

Ryan Gabrielson

In journalism, it doesn’t get any bigger than this.

Two Phoenix area reporters today won a Pulitzer Prize, the most coveted award in the industry, for a series of articles in the East Valley Tribune that exposed problems with local immigration enforcement.

The Pulitzer committee honored journalists Ryan Gabrielson and Paul Giblin with a win in the local reporting category for their “Reasonable Doubt” series, which showed how a heavy focus on immigration by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office was hurting the agency’s own efforts to solve violent crimes like rape and assault.

The pair will share the award with the staff of the Detroit Free Press, which won for its reporting that led to the jailing of Detroit’s former mayor. Other Pulitzer recipients this year include the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald and Las Vegas Sun.

This screenshot of eastvalleytribune.com was taken at 1:59 p.m. Sunday. Click for a full image.

Readers of the Phoenix area’s No. 2 newspaper were stopped dead in their Internet tracks today when they tried to go to eastvalleytribune.com and found the website had disappeared.

The ailing East Valley Tribune already told readers last week it was making its third round of cutbacks this year, laying off more workers and reducing the number of days it would print to just three. So the newspaper’s online followers could be forgiven if they worried just a little bit when they went to the newspaper’s website and were greeted with a generic page that simply said, “This domain name has expired.”

The East Valley Tribune announced today it has laid off 13 more workers as part of another round of cuts that includes dropping a suburban edition and cutting back its number of days in print to just three.

The newest hit comes after two rounds of cuts at the Mesa-based news outlet already this year. In the first in January, the paper laid off about about 140 employees — roughly half its staff — as well as ended home delivery and reduced the number of days in print from seven to four. The paper also eliminated its coverage of Scottsdale and Tempe. Then last month, the newspaper announced the first cuts weren’t enough. The remaining employees were forced to take a week off without pay by the end of June.

Now, in a statement posted on the newspaper’s website, the Tribune announced it will no longer print on Saturdays, leaving readers with print editions on just Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The Freedom Communications-owned paper announced it is also shutting down its Ocotillo edition, a weekly suburban spin-off of the newspaper.

In a continuing sign that media competition in the Valley has changed, a source has confirmed that a third local television station has joined a pact to share stories with one another. The action means a majority of commercial news stations in Phoenix have agreed to pool their resources to cover local stories, ending a previously strict division between competing outlets.

The CBS affiliate, KPHO-TV (Channel 5), agreed to enter into the pact in recent days, a source familiar with the deal told Heat City today. The station joins the local ABC and Fox stations, which announced last week they were launching a so-named “Local News Service” to cover daily news stories. The addition of KPHO has not yet been announced officially, possibly even to the staffs of the stations involved.

The three stations will now rely on just one crew to go out and cover what they deem “routine news events” such as press conferences and sporting events, according to last week’s announcement. The single crew will then send footage from the event to each station, meaning viewers will soon be able to tune into any of the three channels and likely see the same footage in certain stories.

Brian Lawlor

It wasn’t that long ago when intense competition between television news outlets over talent and ratings still made headlines here in the Phoenix area. But with the financial outlook of the industry rapidly spiraling downward, the old battles between local news outlets have changed, according to a memo written by the head of television for the E.W. Scripps Company.

Brian Lawlor, the company’s senior vice president of television, sent an email to news staffs in Phoenix and two other cities earlier this week announcing the creation of a so-called “Local News Service” in each city. The service is essentially an agreement between Scripps-owned stations in each market and their News Corp.-owned counterparts to share stories with each other. “In previous years it may have been unimaginable to consider sharing resources and video with a direct competitor,” Lawlor wrote in the email obtained today by Heat City. “It is clearly a new day.”

A new day indeed. Lawlor’s email told employees the agreement means that a single production crew will cover “routine news events” like press conferences and sports, and both stations will get to use the footage on air or online. In Phoenix, it means that the local ABC and Fox affiliates, which compete for viewers on a daily basis, will get to piggyback off of each other’s resources. The deal was also struck for stations in Detroit and Tampa, Fla.

“I hope you will keep an open mind to this new opportunity and consider the tremendous opportunities that lie ahead with our local coverage,” Lawlor wrote.

The generally-reliable Gannett Blog is reporting that another 30 or so workers have been laid off at the Arizona Republic this week in a new round of “stealth” cuts. The layoffs, according to the report, have come mostly in the newspaper’s circulation department — in other words, the people you talk to when you want to take up or cancel your subscription. The report is unattributed, and Heat City is trying to confirm it. If you have details, please email me. I will keep your name confidential.

Phoenix television stations ABC 15 and Fox 10 agree to share newsroom resources as part of a deal announced Wednesday by their parent companies. Photos by Nick R. Martin and Fox 10

Two Phoenix television stations have agreed to combine some of their newsroom resources in an effort to save cash in a tumbling media economy. The local ABC and Fox affiliates are making the move as part of a deal by their parent companies, which are setting up similar structures in other cities nationwide.

Under the deal announced Wednesday, KNXV-TV (Channel 15) and KSAZ-TV (Channel 10) will pool their resources to cover so-called “general market news events,” according to a statement released by their parent companies. This means that the stations would send only one crew to cover a story and then share the footage later. It’s not clear what kind of news — whether it be press conferences, sports, community meetings — will be covered jointly under the deal. However, the statement said it would be up to the leaders of the partnership to decide that on a day-to-day basis.