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CBS11 lays off three newsroom staffers as part of latest downsizing (updated)


Reporters Robert Riggs and Kaushal Patel are out at CBS11.

By ED BARK
Another round of CBS corporate-mandated layoffs has claimed three CBS11 news room staffers.

Longtime investigative reporter Robert Riggs and relative newcomer Kaushal Patel already have been removed from the station's "News Team" page at cbs11tv.com. Veteran producer John Sparks also is among the casualties.

Riggs and Sparks each have won broadcast journalism's highest honors for their investigative work.

Sparks' work with WFAA8's Dale Hansen on the 1987 SMU football recruiting scandal, which resulted in the school receiving an NCAA-imposed "death penalty," won both a George Foster Peabody Award and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia award. He has worked in all four of D-FW's major TV newsrooms during a distinguished career.

Riggs, who joined CBS11 in October 2002, has received three duPont-Columbia awards and a Peabody for his investigations. He also previously worked at WFAA8.

Riggs' departure leaves "The Investigators" unit at CBS11 down to a lone reporter, Bennett Cunningham. Ginger Allen, the other member of what had been an investigative trio, primarily co-anchors the stations early morning newscasts and does what lately have been fluffy features aimed at women viewers.

Patel had been in the Dallas-Fort Worth market since summer 2006. She began at sister station TXA21 but lately had figured more prominently in CBS11's news coverage.

CBS11 is owned and operated by the CBS network. D-FW is the country's fifth-largest TV market, behind only New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia.