User:Mwinog2777/michael lacey

Michael Lacey is the former editor of the Phoenix New Times and the Village Voice, a First Amendment proponent, and, is currnetly under federal indictment for facilitating prostitution.

Early life
Michael Lacey was born in Binghamton, New York; he went to Catholic schools in Newark, New Jersey, before moving to Arizona at attend Arizona State University. In response to the 1970 Kent State massacre, Lacey wanted flags at the University to be flown at halt-mast. Angered by being told that would not be done, Lacey and several friends started an alterntive newspaper "to get the nuances of that point across. And to have a little fun."

Newspaper career
The first weekly alternative newspaper was called the Arizona Times. Two years after the founding Jim Larkin joined as business manager. In the 1970's the newspaper went public, and, Larkin and Lacey drifted away; they regained control and took it private in 1977, and renamed it the Phoenix New Times, with Lacey as editor. From a circulation low of 16,000 in 1977, it grew to 140,000 by the 1990, with annual revenue of $8.6 million Beginning in 1983 he and Larkin bought multiple other alternative weeklies, and by 2000 they owned eleven newspapers. In 2005 they bought the Village Voice and five others. The company had a market value of $400 million and a combined circulation of 1.8 million. A self-described "prick" who comes complete with "spiky gray hair, watery pale-blue eyes," he had a reputation for a bombastic style; he described his editorial philosophy as: “Our papers have butt-violated every goddamn politician who ever came down the pike! The ones who deserved it. As a journalist, if you don’t get up in the morning and say ‘fuck you’ to someone, why even do it?” The good times did not last for print journalism, with the Internet devouring advertising profits. Lacey reacted to increased Internet advertising with Backpage, beginning in 2004, trying to maintain the company’s hold on ads that traditional newspapers had largely shunned, adult services. It evolved out of the literal back page of the New Times newspapers and morphed into an Internet marketplace. By 2010, after Craigslist shuttered its adult content section, Backpage.com had become the main financial driver of the company, by then called Village Voice Media. In 2012 Lacey left journalism, selling his interests in 13 newspapers, but, keeping ownership of Backpage.

Lacey had a longstanding feud with Maricopa County, Arizona, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, leading to a 2007 subpoena requesting the I.P. addresses of all who had visited the Phoenix New Times website over the past three years. When as an act of civil disobedience the New Times published the subpoena, Lacey and Larkin were arrested. Freed the next day, charges were dropped. Maricopa County settled with them for 3.75 million. $2 million of the settlement was used to endow an Arizona State University professorship of borderlands.

Backpage
The business was lucrative. The adult ads were among the few Backpage charged users to post. Backpage earned $135 million in 2014, according to a U.S. Senate report. A February 2015 appraisal said the company was worth more than $600 million At the time, Backpage was the largest online publisher of sex ads in the world with city-specific sites spanning 97 countries. In the 11 years since it had been launched, it had earned some $500 million for its owners. They were largely impervious to legal challenged becuse of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protected online publishers from civil or criminal penalties for hosting content posted by third parties. Legal momentum started to change in 2015 after a senate investigation. They were forced to hand over millions of pages of incriminating material. The Justice Dept. used this information to come up with a massive 93 count indictment in March, 2018, that centered on Lacey and Larkin, and accused them, and other company officers, with money laundering and facilitating prostitution. In April it was announced that Backpage CEO Carl Ferrer had pleaded guilty and will testify against other Backpage officials. Lacey spent a week in federal custody, released on April 13, 2018, with a $1 million bond. Lacey's attorneys claim he is protected by the free speech guarantees of the First Amendment. Backpage was shut down by federal authorities in April, 2018.

Honors

 * Civil Libertarian of the Year, 2018
 * Arizona Music Hall of Fame