Most news organizations would consider themselves fortunate to assemble a staff of distinguished journalists over several years. The Arizona Guardian has started its operations with that kind of staff. Patti Epler, Paul Giblin, Mary K. Reinhart and Dennis Welch form the core of the Guardian's editorial staff. The four veterans of Arizona politics and government are responsible for reporting and editing the Guardian's online publications, as well as mentoring other staffers.They also have broken ground in the creation of a new business model for Arizona journalism. Epler, Giblin, Reinhart and Welch serve as equal co-owners of Arizona Guardian, L.L.C., the Guardian's parent company. Joining the four is publisher Robert J. Grossfeld who is the fifth equal co-owner and responsible for all non-editorial operations.
Mary K. Reinhart cut her political reporting teeth covering newly elected Gov. Evan Mecham in 1987 for United Press International.
Contact Ms. Reinhart
Paul Giblin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has served as a newspaper editor, columnist and reporter in Arizona, Hawaii and New Mexico. He has covered politics, news, business and sports for more than 20 years.He and reporter Ryan Gabrielson co-authored the East Valley Tribune's five-day investigative series "Reasonable Doubt," which examined the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's illegal-immigration enforcement operation, its hidden costs to county residents and its assault on civil liberties.
The series was awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, and the George Polk Journalism Award for justice reporting, among other awards. The series was the subject of documentary that was featured on the national television program "NOW on PBS" in the spring of 2009.
Among thousands of other stories Giblin has researched and written, he discovered that after years of planning, debate and a public vote, the original site selected for the Arizona Cardinals stadium was in the flight corridor for Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. He reported Tempe officials faked the FAA's approval to win the site competition and that the FAA really believed 62,000-seat stadium would have created a hazard for commercial aircraft. The facility subsequently was built in Glendale.
Giblin used public records to reveal that former Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano had been using public money to throw house parties at his private residence, and that the mayor had planned to parlay a Sister Cities trip to Europe into a love connection arranged through a personal ad on a Web site.
Giblin wrote about a band of feral children who lived in the sewers under the U.S.-Mexico border in Nogales. He elicited a written confession in the Chandler Car Wash Murder case, and uncovered the hidden drug history of a top Scottsdale police official.
Giblin is a regular contributor to The New York Times. His work also has been published in The Dallas Morning News and Boys' Life magazine, among other publications. He has appeared as a guest on CNN, C-Span, NPR, WNYC radio and BBC radio, plus several Phoenix broadcast outlets. He's a frequent guest on the KAET-TV (Channel 8) program "Horizon" on Friday evenings.
He also appeared in three episodes of the late-1980s/early-'90s TV show "Jake and the Fat Man." In one episode, he turned in a brilliant performance as a guest at a gala party thrown for a newspaper columnist, despite the obvious flaw in the script that presumed anyone would throw a gala party for a newspaper columnist. In another episode, Giblin gave a stunning performance as a prison guard, while in another episode, he was hard-working bartender.
Dennis Welch started his journalism career about 10 years ago as the night cops reporter for the East Valley Tribune. During his stint covering the seedier side of cities like Mesa, Tempe and Chandler, he wrote about murders, robberies and saw his share of dead bodies -- including a dead hobo who'd been hit by a train.
Still, none of that prepared him for the raucous world of Arizona politics and the state Legislature. Since covering statewide politics in 2005, Welch has been a regular fixture on the state political landscape, appearing on numerous radio and television talk shows such as Horizon on PBS.
He's covered high-profile races on every level of government, including the 2006 gubernatorial campaign.
When he's not meeting in formerly smoky bars with political operatives, Welch is an avid runner who is preparing to run his first marathon this year. He's also the front man for a punk rock band that plays frequently in the Valley and throughout the Southwest and California.
But that doesn't mean he's completely unrefined. He's a fan of classical music and opera and attends the Phoenix Symphony whenever he can with his girlfriend Jaclyn.
Patti Epler began her journalism career in 1975 when she ran out of money in Anchorage, Alaska. A summer of hiking and fishing in the far north left Epler and her friends broke. With no way to get back to get back to California, she found a job at the Anchorage Times, then the state's largest newspaper, as the "dummy" who laid out the ads (by hand, no computers back then). Six months later, she moved to the newsroom as a consumer columnist and general assignment reporter, later covering cops, courts, the military and local politics.In 1982, Epler and her husband bought a 41-foot sailboat and moved to Honolulu, Hawaii, where they lived aboard and sailed the islands. She worked as an assistant editor at Honolulu magazine and varnished teak.They returned to Alaska in 1984 where she took a job as a business writer for the Anchorage Daily News, covering the oil industry, mining, utilities and the environment. Highlights: Epler was the paper's lead writer for coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill and worked on a staff project about violence and alcoholism among Alaska Natives that won the paper a Pulitzer in 1988.
In 1990, Epler became a political reporter and member of the special projects team at the Tacoma News Tribune in Washingon, covering the state legislature, elections and state and national political issues. Between sessions, she wrote numerous in-depth, investigative pieces on statewide issues and developed a specialty in judicial politics and the state Supreme Court (judges and justices are elected in Washington state.) Other areas of focus: youth violence, gun control, the environment and campaign finance reform.
Epler moved to Phoenix in 1997 to take a job as associate editor, later becoming managing editor, at Phoenix New Times. She continued to write about politics and legal affairs, and for a couple years was the author of the paper's "Spiked" column on current affairs.
In 2004, Epler was hired to be the projects editor for the East Valley Tribune, and became the paper's metro editor about eight months later. She continued to oversee the paper's state and national political writers, the specialty beats and manage projects. Most recently, she was the editor on the paper's highly regarded "Reasonable Doubt" series that investigated Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's illegal immigration enforcement effort.
Epler has won numerous state, regional and national awards for her work, both as a reporter and an editor. She has also written for Business Week, Time, Newsweek and Colliers Encyclopedia.
Robert J. Grossfeld is publisher of The Arizona Guardian and admits to being hopelessly addicted to news, politics, campaigns and elections. Mr. Grossfeld's career dates back to work as a parttime 'news reader' during his freshman year at Michigan State University's WKAR AM-FM. Over the next 40 years he worked as a political reporter or news director in radio, television, and newspapers. He covered virtually every national political convention during the 1970s and 1980s, eventually becoming a nationally known media consultant on local, state and national campaigns and elections.
As President & Executive Producer of The Media Guys, Inc., (TMG) he has led the firm to national recognition for their groundbreaking iFilms online video projects. Mr. Grossfeld has received multiple national awards for his public awareness projects that include his film detailing the impact of the Jack Abramoff affair on the Alabama-Coushatta Indian Tribe of Texas and his iFilmtm "Message to Congress from Katrina's Children."
Widely respected for his social and political insight, Mr. Grossfeld has provided analysis and comment for both local and national news media. Over the course of his career he has twice served on the senior staffs of Members of Congress and has held a number of senior positions in state government.
Mr. Grossfeld holds both B.A. and M.A. degrees from Michigan State University and was licensed as a social worker (Michigan) following his post-graduate clinical training at the Red Cedar Institute.
Mr. Grossfeld is a registered Independent and self-described "populist."
Contact Mr. Grossfeld