Virg Hill Arizona Journalist of the Year

Paul Rubin, Phoenix New Times

 The official story: This is the third time Paul Rubin has been named Virg Hill Journalist of the Year.

            Walt Bogdanich, assistant investigations editor at The New York Times, observed that Rubin “doesn't walk on the sunny side of the street. If he did, he never would have found a disbarred lawyer who preyed on vulnerable couples seeking a divorce, or a prison psychiatrist who pronounced an inmate to be of sound mind — without apparently visiting him — on the morning he hung himself in jail, or the sad story of a once prominent musician who died homeless in last year's heat wave. Rubin embodies the best of the old-time crime reporter:  a big heart and a low threshold of indignation. That combination, backed by a skilled use of interviews and public records, produced a compelling series of stories last year worthy of the Virg Hill award.”

            Peter Bhatia, executive editor of The Oregonian, called Rubin's portfolio “riveting from beginning to end.” He singled out Rubin’s “remarkably deep reporting” and “straightforward writing style that makes long stories quick reads. From con men to criminals to those that society forgets, his combination of journalistic skills make these people compelling — even if you ultimately end up really disliking them.”

The real story: Starts inflicting “journalism” in 1976, in Tucson — freelance sports. Plays pro fastpitch softball and “gardens” before talking way into job at Sierra Vista Herald-Dispatch in 1981. President Reagan shot on first day of work. Becomes expert on “crucial” zoning issues and pot-growing arrests. Joins Phoenix Gazette for three days in 1983. Runs away. Recruited to New Times by Mike Lacey in August 1985. Lacey pleads poverty, offers minimum wage. Rubin bites. Somehow wins Virg Hill twice, and is a finalist so many other times that Susan Lucci takes notice. Now makes more than minimum wage.

First runner-up

Sarah Fenske, Phoenix New Times

 Sarah Fenske, 29, is a writer at the Phoenix New Times. Last year, she was a finalist for the Houston Press Club’s “Print Journalist of the Year” award. She’s won top honors from the Association of Women in Communications, the National Association of Black Journalists and chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists in Ohio and Texas.

    Judge Bob Baker, the longtime writing coach of the Los Angles Times, said Fenske’s “range of topics and the economy and style of language was wonderful. To be able to move this gracefully from the Holocaust memorial trickster to the constitutional issues of a proselytizing restaurant worker to the infant head injury phobia to the angry rancher to the ethos of lesbian chic was an impressive tour of the human condition. The writing was authoritative without being showy; the tone was confident without sneering. I did not resent spending 90 minutes or more with this entry; it was a pleasure.”

    An Ohio native, Fenske started her career as a beat reporter for the Morning Journal in Lorain, Ohio, and worked for papers in Cleveland and Houston before moving to Phoenix in November 2004.

    When she isn’t reporting, she’s often at the Phoenix Mountain Preserve, hiking, or at the bar, running her mouth – and running up her tab.

Second runner-up (tie)

Robert Anglen, The Arizona Republic

            Robert Anglen, 39 has been an investigative reporter for more than a decade. He

has been nominated multiple times for the Pulitzer, once for exposing Social Security scams among California's Death Row inmates that led to a nationwide review of state and federal prisons. Shortly after being hired

by The Arizona Republic in 2004, Anglen launched an investigation of Taser International, linking the popular stun gun to multiple deaths and to the injuries of several police officers. In 2005, he was named Virg Hill Journalist of the Year.

            “Robert Anglen is an investigative reporter, pure and simple,” wrote Peter Bhatia of The Oregonian. “Clearly, he is a reporter who, once he sinks his teeth into something, stays with it until the story is done. His ongoing work around the company that makes Tasers speaks to that. But he has a storyteller inside him, too. Other stories in his portfolio, of wrongdoing and criminality, unfold tales

that are interesting, compelling and fun to read.”

            Born in Los Angeles, Anglen has worked as a skip tracer, bill collector, cab driver and process server. He also writes fiction and his stories have appeared in several magazines and writing anthologies. He is 39 years old, married and father to triplet two-year-olds.

Second runner-up (tie)

Chris Hawley, The Arizona Republic

Chris Hawley, 33, joined The Arizona Republic in 2004 and writes from the paper’s Mexico City bureau.

            “The hardest thing for a beat reporter to do is find enough time to shed obligatory coverage in favor of enterprise stories — stories that let you look at a familiar subject in a fresh and interesting way,” wrote Bob Baker, longtime writing coach for the Los Angeles Times. “Most readers, such as me, figure they know all they need to know about Mexico and stop reading more than a couple paragraphs of the next immigration story. Chris’ coverage made me stop and think of how little I really know.”

            Hawley began has career as a foreign correspondent while in Japan as a high school foreign exchange student. For $5 an article, he sent dispatches to his hometown paper about everything from Hiroshima to his first battle with a high-tech Japanese toilet.His wanderings continued in college, where he wrote features for the Diario de Alcalá de Henares while studying in Spain.

            After college, he took a job with the San Juan Star in Puerto Rico and then moved to the Caribbean Bureau of the Associated Press. He became an editor on AP’s International Desk in New York in 2000 and on Sept. 11, 2001 he was sitting at his desk in Rockefeller Center when American Airlines Flight 11 roared overhead on its way to the World Trade Center. He helped edit breaking coverage of the attacks in AP's New York Bureau.

            Hawley has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He is an airplane pilot and a scuba diver. His wife, Rebecca Holzer, is an art photography teacher at the American School in Mexico City. They are expecting their first baby in August.