The longtime owners of the Village Voice, a national chain of alternative weeklies dedicated to a progressive agenda, have decided to take the money they made from a lawsuit against Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio to establish a Chair in Borderlands Issues at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.
The $2 million donation from Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin will support an endowed chair that will oversee a new program in which students will write on immigration and border issues in the U.S. and Mexico, in both Spanish and English at the Cronkite School. The Lacey-Larkin Chair will be the only endowed chair in the country with the agenda to exclusively highlight Latino and borderlands issues.
According to the press release from ASU, “The chair will direct advanced student journalists in a professional immersion program in which they will report, write and produce cutting-edge stories that will be distributed in English and Spanish to professional media outlets, and will be prominently featured on the Cronkite News website and Arizona PBS newscasts. Additionally, the Lacey-Larkin Chair will comment on and write about border and immigration reporting nationally, promoting public scrutiny and serving as a national voice on coverage of issues affecting the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population.”
The duo claims there is a need for more immigration coverage.
The duo won a $3.75 million settlement from Maricopa County in a widely publicized case that tested First Amendment rights.
“Sheriff Joe Arpaio is trampling federal court oversight in his rush to harass the Hispanic community,” Lacey said. “During this past election, virtually every candidate felt compelled to discuss our border as if Mexico was an enemy instead of a neighbor. Elected officials are responding to and fanning the flames of bigotry. We intend to encourage the better nature of students at the Cronkite School.”
Larkin added, “I grew up in Arizona and was taught from an early age that one must give a hand to those of us less fortunate in life. There is not a more deserving group than those Mexican immigrants who brave unimaginable peril in the Sonoran Desert to travel to Arizona for work and economic opportunity. I hope my endowment of this Borderlands Chair at Cronkite shines a bright light on the Mexican immigrants’ heroic struggle for the American Dream in an unfortunately inhospitable Arizona environment.”
Kristin Gilger, associate dean of the Cronkite School, said “It ensures that the work they care about so much and have done so well lives on in perpetuity,” she said. “And it will give students an unmatched opportunity to do the kind of high-level and insightful coverage so needed in this area.”
In 2004, the New Times published Arpaio’s home address in defiance of a state statute that bars news organizations from publishing home addresses of public officials if the information could pose a threat to their safety, according to the press release.
Arpiao over the years has been the subject of many death threats so the move by the tabloid was particularly irresponsible. They claimed they were trying to make an issue of Arpaio’s real estate assets.
In response, the supporters of Arpaio abused their power. As the press release notes, prosecutors issued subpoenas seeking the identities of anyone who read the paper online, including information about what other sites they had visited before and after reading the New Times.
In response, the two men published an article in which they criticized the investigation and exposed the nature of the subpoenas’ demands. The two alleged that the subpoenas were “Breathtaking Abuse of the Constitution.”
The men were arrested on trumped up charges that they had illegally disseminated grand jury information.
The two sued, and after a prolonged court battle against Arpaio, in 2012 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled: “It is hard to conceive of a more direct assault on the First Amendment than public officials ordering the immediate arrests of their critics. And, in this case, there was nothing subtle about their efforts to stifle the New Times.”
The two received a $3.75 million settlement paid with Maricopa County taxpayer funds.
With their winnings Lacey and Larkin established the “Frontera Fund” to assist the Hispanic community, which has “borne the brunt of the racial animus and civil rights abuses in Arizona,” Lacey said in the press release.
Christopher Callahan, dean of the Cronkite School, said the school will conduct a national search for the new chair.