Longtime local journalist Jim Nintzel, who worked as a reporter and editor at the Tucson Weekly for more than three decades before stepping down last year, is joining the Tucson Sentinel staff to serve as the Government & Political Impact reporter.

Beginning in July, he’ll become the local independent nonprofit newsroom’s designated watchdog over state and federal government issues as they impact the residents of Southern Arizona. Nintzel will also join the rest of the Sentinel staff in keeping our readers abreast of the latest ducks, dips, dives and dodges of area political candidates and bureaucrats.

“I’ve long admired what Editor and Publisher Dylan Smith and the small-but-mighty team have done at the Sentinel over the last decade and I’m thrilled to return to writing about Arizona politics,” said Nintzel, who was also a regular on Arizona Public Media’s “Reporters Roundtable.”

His beat will include enterprise and trend stories about discussions and decisions in Phoenix and Washington, D.C., always through the lens of what it means to Tucson and Pima County.

The new Government & Political Impact reporter position is backed in part by the nonprofit Report for America, a project which supports reporters in newsrooms throughout the nation. Nintzel landed his first job in the journalism business while he was still attending Alice Vail Junior High, delivering the much-missed Tucson Citizen to his neighbors. He would read the paper while folding his stack before setting out on his bike for his route.

In his career at the Weekly, Nintzel won more than 50 statewide and national journalism awards for his coverage of politics, government, science and other feature writing. He was named a journalist of the year multiple times by the Arizona Press Club and Arizona Newspaper Association.

Nintzel has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN and other national networks, as well as serving as the Friday host of AZPM’s “Arizona Illustrated.” After a shake-up at AZPM, he then hosted his own “Zona Politics” interview program, broadcast on various channels. He has also been an adjunct journalism instructor at the University of Arizona, teaching the core Reporting Public Affairs course for more than 15 years. Nintzel joined the Weekly after graduating from the University of Arizona with a creative writing degree in 1989, starting his career running errands for the advertising department. Within a few years, he was working as a reporter for the paper.