New Times has kept the Valley of the Sun's feet to the fire.
The paper began as an aggressive, irascible alternative to the stuffy mainstream media, which attacked "hippies" just as it now belittles millennials. The fuel for the paper’s creation was provided by opposition to the Vietnam War. After the shooting deaths of four students at Kent State University by National Guardsmen, college campuses across the nation erupted into demonstrations and strikes. In Phoenix the state’s dominant newspaper, the
Arizona Republic, published an editorial cartoon by Pulitzer Prize winner Reg Manning. Coupled with the intense anti-war sentiment of the time, the cartoon inspired a group of Arizona State University students, led by future owner and editor Michael Lacey, to begin publishing an alternative to the