Chuck Philips, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist famend for his reporting on darkish corners of the music trade, died in January at age 71. No actual date or reason behind demise has been given by the household.

As one of many Los Angeles Occasions‘ most outstanding leisure journalists within the Nineties and 2000s, Philips shared a Pulitzer in 1999 with Michael A. Hiltzik for a collection of tales on corruption within the music trade. The Pulitzer board cited particularly their tales on ”a charity sham sponsored by the Nationwide Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, unlawful cleansing packages for rich celebrities and a resurgence of radio payola.”

Nonetheless, it’s Philips’ dogged reporting over a interval of a few years on the Tupac Shakur and Infamous B.I.G. murders that made him a legend unto himself within the hip-hop neighborhood, together with his investigations and theories nonetheless actively introduced up and debated right now, at the same time as new developments come to gentle.

Music mogul Jimmy Iovine was amongst these impressed by Philips’ reporting and depth of data, telling Selection on Thursday: “What I discovered about Chuck was that he was a journalist who had a real really feel for enterprise in addition to for the humanities and for music. Which is uncommon. And,” Iovine added, Philips was “an amazing man.”

Philips’ co-Pulitzer winner, Hiltzik, tells Selection: “Chuck was essentially the most tenacious, scrupulous, principled and trustworthy journalist I ever knew. I discovered extra from our partnership than I did with anybody else I labored with over a protracted profession. We and the calling of journalism have suffered a grievous loss.”

Robert Hilburn, the pioneering pop critic and journalist who first introduced Philips into the Occasions, showered him with related reward. “Chuck was essentially the most fearless, tireless and trustworthy reporter I met in my three a long time on the Los Angeles Occasions,” Hilburn mentioned Thursday. “Earlier than Chuck, pop journalists centered on the music and the performers, however Chuck performed a trailblazing position in concentrating on the music enterprise itself, reporting in depth on issues starting from censorship and sexual harassment to corruption and abuse of energy and gangster ties. His solely allegiance was to the reality. Although different publications ultimately adopted his lead, none got here near matching his tenacity, daring or affect.”

Phrase of Philips’ demise began to get out very steadily as a few of his former colleagues on the Occasions discovered of his demise and posted about it on social media. It was confirmed in a really brief obituary written and printed by his brother, Dan Philips, within the Wednesday print version of the Occasions.

It was believed to be Chuck Philips’ want that the Occasions not have its personal journalists write a workers obituary for him, on account of a bitter breakup he had with the paper in 2008, and there has but to be one showing within the Occasions. (Some have puzzled whether or not the newspaper may chorus from having a workers obit due to acceding to his obvious needs, or whether or not it would simply fall between the cracks due to contemporary layoffs, or each.) However the family-generated demise discover confirmed the information for colleagues in Los Angeles who knew and admired Philips, and ex-Occasions-ers on Fb and elsewhere have begun filling private and non-private boards with testimonials to Philips.

“Chuck was the toughest working, most tenacious reporter I’ve ever recognized — and I’ve recognized a whole lot of great ones,” posted journalist and professor Shauna Snow-Capparelli, his former “pod-mate” on the Occasions. “He was obsessed together with his tales and pushed to root out corruption and wrongdoing, significantly when it precipitated hurt to underdogs. He was additionally a feminist — one of many uncommon few who really spoke out when he noticed ladies being mistreated. And he was an exquisite buddy: actually supportive, form, and really beneficiant.”

His brother, Dan Philips, says that Chuck moved from their native Detroit to L.A. within the ’70s with one aim in thoughts: to be a singer-songwriter. However within the ’80s, his pursuits shifted, and he entered the journalism program at Cal State Lengthy Seaside, which counted him as considered one of its most illustrious alumni after his Pulitzer win.

In his preliminary work as a stringer, Philips seemed to be extra of a general-interest leisure reporter, earlier than his investigative inclinations got here to the fore. His first piece for the Occasions, in 1989, was a report from his hometown, Detroit, in regards to the Motown Museum. Even within the first few years that adopted that, Philips would write about safer matters in addition to extra controversial ones, as he coated a variety of territory beneath Hilburn’s watch within the Calendar part. Lastly, in 1995, the enterprise part employed him full-time beneath the newly fashioned Firm City aegis, which was the Occasions’ stab at turning into recognized for a a lot harder-hitting tackle the leisure biz in L.A. His byline grew to become referred to as one thing topping tales that just about uniformly meant to shake issues up.

Dan Philips tried to elucidate the place that got here from in his brother. “He at all times sought the reality. He at all times went after the true factor. He didn’t like bullshit. He actually wished to know what the deal was every time there was a deal of some form, whether or not it was a supply of a bit of inventive materials, or whether or not it was a distribution of that, or whether or not it was the income from it. And it appeared to guide him into this unusual new world of being in regards to the enterprise of music in addition to the content material of music. I don’t even know if he even supposed it. It was simply one thing about his inquisitive nature.

“He used to go on in regards to the sacred coronary heart of Jesus when he was a youngster. We had been each introduced as much as Roman Catholics, and he was fixated on these little silver, chrome sacred hearts that the Catholic merchandising machine would prove, simply as he was very fixated on being a superb individual. I feel the imagery of that coronary heart with the flames rising up out of the highest however the swords impaling it on the identical time — I feel which may even be a consultant icon for all that he got here to expertise whereas we knew him.”

“He had a really tender and good and feeling coronary heart,” Dan Philips continued, “so he was good to folks and open to being good to folks fairly simply. However then on prime of that, he one way or the other develop into this hard-nosed investigative reporter — a hard-driving, relentless individual. The 2 issues existed on the identical time: a warm-hearted one who was in a position to methodically and aggressively go after the reality.”

The flare-up between Philips and his editors that led to him leaving the Occasions in 2008 needed to do with paperwork that had been included as a part of his ongoing look into what led to Tupac Shakur’s demise. When the paperwork turned out to be cast, the paper printed a front-page retraction, and Philips was pressured into resigning. His take, which he wrote about in an essay that was printed within the Village Voice and elsewhere, was that the story in query was nonetheless basically true, and that he had been pressured by an editor to incorporate the later-disproven paperwork to bolster the story’s case. There was appreciable division within the newsroom over whether or not Philips had been handled pretty or whether or not, within the phrases of some ex-Occasions journalists this week, he obtained a “uncooked deal” from the paper whose investigative fame had been significantly bolstered throughout his 19 years writing for the publication.

Even years after he obtained out of the journalism enterprise, his title continues to be near legend in hip-hop circles. In barely much less legendary trend, it’s additionally acquainted to the lips of many journalists who bear in mind his time as considered one of L.A.’s most outstanding journalists as a sign change in critical leisure enterprise protection and fearlessness in uncovering scandal.

Wrote a youthful journalist, Gerrick Kennedy, who went on to make his personal title on the Occasions: “An iconic byline. Want I had the prospect to satisfy Chuck in individual, however have learn a lot of his work I actually felt like I knew him as a journalist.”

“There was no one within the nation that was actually reporting severely on the enterprise of pop music, which had a darkish underbelly,” says Hilburn. “And Chuck went into that, and whether or not it was censorship or sexual harassment, all of that sort of stuff, he coated it.”

Barbara Saltzman, one of many prime editors of the Calendar part throughout Philips’ time there, known as him “the perfect reporter I’ve ever labored with.”

Philips’ different accolades past the Pulitzer included an award from the Nationwide Affiliation of Black Journalists for his hip-hop reporting, the George Polk Award from Lengthy Island College for his general biz reporting and an award from the Los Angeles Press Membership for his reporting on censorship.

The guestbook for his on-line obituary may be discovered right here.