He is the founder and former executive editor of the Phoenix New Times, which he and his business partner, publisher Jim Larkin, expanded into a nationwide chain of 17 alternative weeklies, known as Village Voice Media (VVM).

The most famous of these retaliatory incidents was Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's arrests of Lacey and Larkin, after the pair exposed illegal grand jury subpoenas that demanded notes and other investigative material from journalists at Phoenix New Times, as well as information on the papers' online readers.

[10] Backpage came under criticism from state attorneys general and nonprofits that accused the company of facilitating prostitution and sex trafficking through its adult, dating and massage sections.

In a Jan. 20, 2022 article in Reason, Elizabeth Nolan Brown reported the following: "A new federal trial was supposed to start in February, but it's been postponed as the parties battle over whether the case should be totally dismissed.

[28] The panel wrote that "the government’s misconduct" during the trial "was not so egregious as to compel a finding" that prosecutors intended to provoke a mistrial, the legal standard for dismissal in this instance.

The Ninth Circuit noted and that “his appeal raises a 'substantial question' of law or fact that is 'fairly debatable' and that, if determined favorably to him, is likely to result in reversal on the single count of conviction.”[40] [41] Michael Lacey was born in Binghamton, New York.

The aspiring journalists behind it blew their first deadline, eventually publishing on June 9, 1970, with 16,000 copies, featuring a lead story by Lacey about a demonstration to honor Kent State's victims at ASU's Goodwin Stadium.

Senator Paul Fannin's arrest for DWI, and how the Arizona Republic quashed a story about a rising Republican star's secret files on local precinct committeemen.

The case went all the way to the Arizona Supreme Court, which found in favor of the upstart paper, ruling that "the regulations are an unconstitutional infringement on the right to a free press as guaranteed by the First Amendment".

A self-described "prick" who comes complete with "spiky gray hair, watery pale-blue eyes",[47] Lacey was known for his bombastic style; he described his editorial philosophy as: "Our papers have butt-violated every goddamn politician who ever came down the pike!

"[59] Lacey made clear that the editor of each paper was responsible for its content, a mix of long-form journalism, features, news shorts, and music, film and arts criticism.

With Larkin as "the business brains of the operation" and Lacey as its "erratic editorial genius", the two men "built a free newspaper empire on hustle, idealism, an antagonistic attitude toward authority—and paid classified ads".

"[65] During Ortega's tenure, Lacey wrote several pieces critical of the police chief, including a cover story on the Jan. 1984 shooting of Standley Wesley, an unarmed, 18-year-old black man, by a white Phoenix cop.

"[69] In 1990, Lacey targeted both Chief Ortega and newly elected Maricopa County Attorney Rick Romley in a series of articles on Club 902, a Phoenix dive bar notorious for the crack sales that took place in its parking lot.

[72] In 1992, Lacey accused Romley and Ortega of seeking revenge by trying to involve him in an infamous corruption sting run by the County Attorney and the police department known as AzScam.

[75] Police records showed that Stedino began asking people about Lacey one day after his New Times column reported that the state liquor authority was prepared to shut down Club 902 as a result of his investigative series.

"[77] From the time Joe Arpaio was first elected to be the Sheriff of Maricopa County in 1992, the Phoenix New Times provided its readers with scathing coverage of the many controversies arising from Arpaio's tenure: the deaths in his jails and the costly lawsuit payouts that resulted;[78][79][80][81] the questionable antics of his deputies and his posse;[82] the targeting of his political opponents;[83][84][85] and unconstitutional sweeps of Latino neighborhoods and raids of local businesses on the hunt for undocumented immigrants.

"[94] In 2013, it was announced that $2 million of the settlement would be used to help create an endowed chair for the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University to "specifically to increase coverage of Latino and border issues".

"[95] Instead, the full $3.75 million settlement was used to start the Lacey and Larkin Frontera Fund,[49] largely to benefit the Hispanic community that "has borne the brunt of racial animus and civil rights abuses in Arizona.

[100] New Times, Inc. reacted to increased Internet advertising with Backpage.com, beginning in 2004, trying to maintain the company's hold on classified ads, including those that traditional newspapers shunned, adult services.

[101][55][58] Lacey explained that the sale was driven by the controversy over Backpage and the difficulty in managing the newspapers while fighting legal battles over the online marketplace, saying that it was something that "the local editors don't need to be defusing every morning when they wake up.

A February 2015 appraisal said the company was worth more than $600 million[103] At the time, Backpage was the largest online publisher of adult-themed ads in the world with city-specific sites spanning 97 countries.

The publication was largely impervious to legal challenges because of the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protected online publishers from civil or criminal penalties for hosting content posted by third parties.

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, participating in a criminal conspiracy and facilitating prostitution under the Travel Act.

Senator, Sen. McCain supported the nominations of two persons to the federal bench who would ultimately sit on the case, U.S. District Court Judges Susan Brnovich and Diane Humetewa.

Prosecutors sent the memos to the defense by accident as part of the discovery process in the case, but a district court judge ruled that they could not be introduced at trial, despite their apparently exculpatory nature.

The GAO reported that the “relocation of platforms overseas makes it more difficult for law enforcement to gather tips and evidence”, and the FBI's capacity to “identify and locate sex trafficking victims and perpetrators” has been significantly decreased post-Backpage.

[28][144] The second Backpage trial officially began on August 29, 2023 in federal court in Phoenix, following a three-week delay caused by the suicide of Lacey's co-defendant and business partner, Jim Larkin.

[149] During opening arguments, Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Stone told the jury that the Backpage defendants had conspired to facilitate prostitution on the site, strategizing on how to bring more sex ads to the platform.

[152] Ferrer was allowed to plead guilty in federal court in Phoenix in 2018 to one count of conspiracy to facilitate prostitution, with a possible sentence of up to 5 years, in exchange for testifying against the others indicted by the U.S.