[5][6][7] The Village Voice and Paul Krassner's The Realist— an amalgam of Mad-magazine-style satire and alternative journalism first published in New York City in 1958—are often cited as the main sources of inspiration for underground newspapers.

Although his father was not college educated, Lacey later recalled, he had insisted that his son read the daily New York Journal-American every day, a habit that bred a lifelong interest in journalism.

He had already dropped out of school when he and a pair of students, Frank Fiore and Karen Lofgren, felt compelled to report accurately on the campus anti-war protests, which they believed were either being ignored or misrepresented by the ultra-conservative local media led by the Republic.

Part of a blue-collar family that had deep roots in the desert metropolis, Larkin had grown up reading many of the same magazines as Lacey, whose attention he got by sending New Times a detailed written analysis of the city's political and media scene.

[9] A fellow college dropout who had attended school in Mexico before returning home, Larkin quickly became the paper's business and sales leader, injecting some practical thinking into its operations.

It never gained traction for a variety of reasons, including cultural differences between the two Arizona cities, a lack of advertising interest, and an editorial emphasis on Phoenix politics and issues.

Hired in 1983 directly out of college at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Van De Voorde began his career as New Times' calendar editor, but quickly moved up in the editorial department.

There was strong reader response thanks to the provocative and humorous nature of many of the ads; combined with the publications' growing circulation, this created a vibrant marketplace that was different than daily newspaper classifieds.

The alternative newspaper model, with no paid circulation, no real tangible assets, and a decidedly outsiders' viewpoint of the power structure of Phoenix, was not seen in a kind light by banking interests.

Finally in the summer of 1987, one banker, Gary Driggs, decided to take a chance on the small company and NTI was able to establish adequate borrowing and credit capacity allowing it to buy out all of the 200-plus outstanding stockholders who were left from the ill-fated 1973 public offering.

The purchase price was less than $100,000,[40] but the newly acquired credit line, combined with the growing profits at Phoenix New Times, allowed Lacey and Larkin to invest $1.4 million to jump-start the paper.

NTI expanded coverage into areas that matched the journalistic model of its other publications: in-depth reporting and investigations, event listings, food and restaurant reviews, and a fully flushed out classified section.

In a provocative interview with New York magazine published shortly after the deal was announced, Lacey made it clear he expected the Voice to take on New Times' fighting spirit.

In taking this position, VVM felt that the First Amendment rights implications, coupled with the protections given to interactive computer services in section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, were paramount.

The suit was filed in California state court under a Depression-era statute known as the Unfair Practices Act, which makes it illegal to sell a product below cost if it can be proven that the sale was made with the intent to injure a competitor or "destroy competition."

Brugmann, who over the years had made no secret of his wish that Lacey and Larkin would pack their bags and leave town, claimed that the Weekly was undercutting him on price and subsidizing the effort with cash infusions from Phoenix.

It took four years for the suit to come before a jury, in part because of extensive pre-trial motions arguing such points as whether a law that had been written to prevent Safeway from undercutting mom 'n' pop grocery stores on price could realistically be applied to modern-day newspaper advertisements, especially when many of those ads now appeared on the Internet.

When the case went to trial in 2008, the two publications savaged each other, both from the witness stand and in withering daily news reports written by NTI/VVM's Andy Van De Voorde for the Weekly and his nemesis at the Guardian, Brugmann lieutenant Tim Redmond.

One in particular — the arrest of Lacey and Larkin by Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio for allegedly violating grand-jury secrecy laws — harkened back to the VVM founders' early days bedeviling the power elite of Phoenix.

Known for his interest in downscale noodle joints and taco carts, he received the first Pulitzer Prize ever awarded to a restaurant critic, an honor that reflected not just his knowledge of food but his love of Los Angeles, whose nooks and crannies were the true star of his stories.

The story, the first long-form effort of Thompson's career, received first-place in the Investigative Reporters & Editors contest and was chased by national publications including the Washington Post and the New York Times.

In the first, reporter John Dougherty revealed that controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio had dumped thousands of dollars of cash into local real estate and had convinced judges to redact property records so thoroughly that members of the public had no way of telling just how a relatively low-paid lawman was getting rich in the world of business.

In 2007, he lashed out by encouraging Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas, and a hand-picked special prosecutor, to issue sweeping grand-jury subpoenas demanding that New Times turn over all of its notes and records about any story written about the sheriff since 2004.

The story first appeared in Westword, which detailed how an insular, macho culture at the academy had allowed rape and sexual-harassment cases to proliferate despite the Air Force's half-hearted attempts at reform.

This story took first-place in the Investigative Reporters & Editors contest,[87] and also was the centerpiece of a portfolio that won Westword staff writer Julie Jargon the Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

[88] Weekly reporter Lisa Davis received multiple national awards for this story about how nuclear researchers handled – and grossly mishandled – the Cold War's most dangerous radioactive substances at a top-secret lab inside the Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard.

Encouraged by Lacey, who often told reporters he had enjoyed reading Mad magazine as a child,[90] the papers engaged in a wide range of provocative acts that often sparked as much righteous ire as they did laughter.

In 1990, New Times music editor David Koen posed as a reporter for the Mesa Tribune in order to goad state legislator Jan Brewer, then pushing a law to make it illegal for minors to buy record albums containing offensive lyrics, into reciting particularly profane passages over the phone.

)[91] NTI/VVM received similar flak in 2003, when Mike Seely of the Riverfront Times in St. Louis wrote a story intended to lampoon the hype surrounding basketball phenomenon LeBron James, who was about to become the NBA's number one draft pick straight out of high school.

"Shebron's Truth," for which Seely obtained play-along quotes from real-life talent scouts, purported to tell the tale of a middle-school girl who could already tomahawk dunk over older boys, and at the age of twelve was considering declaring herself eligible for the WNBA.