Paul Giblin

How did you get into the journalism profession? Back at The University of Arizona, I worked for the Arizona Daily Wildcat. Once I graduated, I worked for newspapers in New Mexico, Arizona, Hawaii, and then Arizona again. I worked for the East Valley Tribune in metro Phoenix for 14 years.

Tell us a bit about why you pursued the “Reasonable Doubt” project.

Immigration really touched everything in Arizona. A lot of the debate was essentially bumper sticker slogans. There wasn’t any depth or real understanding of the issue among most people who were discussing it. Sheriff Joe Arpaio proclaimed himself as the champion of illegal immigration enforcement, but after talking to him about it, it was clear that even he didn’t know the specific results or consequences of his program. No one did. My reporting partner Ryan Gabrielson and I decided to find out. Ultimately, we just wanted to elevate the conversation in Arizona.

Winning a Pulitzer is quite an

honor. How’d you find out? I was covering a U.S. Senate field hearing in Phoenix at the time. I was sitting in the front row when my cell phone kept ringing over and over. Despite my efforts to silence it, Senator Joe Lieberman kept giving me dirty looks. So I snuck out into the hallway and my phone rang again. It was my buddy Mike Weiss, an old editor of mine. He said, “I guess I’ll be seeing you in New York.” When I asked him what he was talking about, he broke the news. How does one celebrate winning a Pulitzer? I had no idea how to celebrate. I just knew I wanted to throw a party – that night! I lost track of how many people I invited over. I served cheeseburgers at my house and invited a ton of people over. They all brought champagne. So we had cheeseburgers and champagne all night long. I think everyone from the newspaper industry in Phoenix came over that night. How do you display your Pulitzer? One day I was downtown walking by the Arizona Mining Museum. In the gift shop, they had some crystals on spinning, multi-colored light-up stands. I asked the gift shop attendant how much they cost and she thought I meant the crystals. I bought two light-up stands – one for my reporting partner and one for me. It’s very Spencers’ Gifts and ’70s chic, but it’s great. So the Pulitzer, which is Tiffany crystal, spins around, shooting colored beams of light across my house. It’s a bit disco inferno, a bit alien abduction.

So, what are you working on now? I work in the Public Affairs Office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Afghanistan as a civilian employee. I’m based in Kabul. I travel around the country, mostly by helicopter, and write articles about the reconstruction efforts.

Are you armed out there? I’m only armed with a tape recorder and a notepad.

How do you see the health of the

journalism industry today? Today, there’s the conflict of fact-based journalism versus opinion-based journalism. We have a lot of opinion masquerading as fact-based journalism, and that’s turning a lot of people off to journalism in general.

Tell us a bit about your Delta Chi

experience. I joined Delta Chi as a sophomore. A guy named Bob Gray was my roommate. We’d stay up on Wednesday nights to listen to the “Virgin Vinyl” show at midnight, which played new wave songs. We’d tape the show and then listen to the songs in our room all week long. People thought we were crazy.

What’s one of your best memories from your undergraduate

days? I was having breakfast one morning and Bob Gray said, “Hey, I’m going down to Rocky Point in Mexico with twelve sorority women for spring break.” Naturally, I volunteered to go with him. He told me that a Chi O named Sandy would pick us up the next morning at eight o’clock. We stayed out late that night and woke up five minutes before eight. We fell out of our bunks, ran into the showers, threw on some clothes, and dashed downstairs. A car pulled up and a pretty brunette said, “Hey, are you guys Paul and Bob?” We said, “Yes!” and we jumped into her car. I married her later on. We’ve been married now 23 years.