Lacey comes to town

New Times editorial chief Michael Lacey flew into John Wayne yesterday and spent several hours with staffers at the OC Weekly, one of the Village Voice Media papers he is acquiring. They ate Mexican and had a couple of beers, and it sounds like the Orange Countians feel better about things than their LA Weekly counterparts. Lacey left the OCers with the impression he likes what they do, but thinks the Los Angeles paper needs some work. When Lacey met with some editors in L.A. last week, he claimed not to be very familiar with the paper and apparently asked for some back issues to read up on. Bottom line impressions I heard from the LA Weekly meeting: Lacey came across as arrogant, too enamored of "snarky" as a journalistic style, and convinced that the old New Times Los Angeles was a great weekly paper.