Tony Ortega and The Underground Bunker

Tony Ortega is a former employee of the Village Voice—a publication which found itself in hot water when it was revealed they’d been advertising the services of known sex-traffickers in their seedy ‘Backpage’ section.

Ortega now runs the Underground Bunker blog. Billing itself as the go-to zone for (eye-rolling sensationalized, bigoted, anti-religious) rants, it gives away Ortega’s game. How much clearer can it be that this supposedly “legitimate” blog is nothing but a bully pulpit from which Ortega can indulge his intolerance disguised as social outrage and foist off entirely fabricated nonsense as “breaking news”?

Sources in the journalist community consider Tony Ortega a developer of false leads, and let’s be clear Ortega is not a real journalist and here is why. When evaluating information, we are often admonished to “consider the source.” In the case of Tony Ortega, the warning applies not only to the content of his blogs but also to Ortega personally and the “publications” for which he worked.

Alternative papers are free weekly publications that earn revenue most often through the sale of the kind of advertising that reputable newspapers won’t permit – adult bookstores, strip clubs, classifieds with strong sexual content, etc. In between the trash, they slip in tabloid-style articles, promoted as “edgy” or “daring” when, in truth, they are simply fabrications sensationalized by low credibility writers like Ortega. While some of these “papers” make an effort to rise above the rest, most are gutter rags that all too often define “alternative news” as a slanderous substitution of the facts.

Ortega has spent his life practicing this excuse for journalism within the New Times Media and the Village Voice Media franchise of alternative papers. This platform has suited him well, for Ortega wrote for sleazy tabloids like he was born to it, a disposition that was in evidence as far back as high school.

[Header image: John Rickard]

Ortega’s Cycle of Fake Careers

In a recent article we discussed how little, in fact, Tony Ortega has changed over the years. He has always been motivated by greed and pride. And he has always been an obsessive troll.

And it’s the subject of his obsessive nature that should be a major red flag to anyone who might be

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The Ongoing Risk

Earlier this week we reported that Dan Hyer, the sales and marketing director of Backpage.com plead guilty in Arizona federal court to conspiring to facilitate prostitution. He is the second Backpage executive to plead guilty so far, with at least another six others slated to go to trial in early 2020.

Recently we’ve been asked

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Criminal Convictions Is What Keeps Tony Ortega Awake at Night

In the lead up to the coming trial of Tony Ortega’s former bosses the rising myriad of convictions must be giving team Tony Ortega no shortage of sleepless nights.

In addition to the convictions we mentioned in our last report, another has just come across our desk. This time it’s a Wisconsin man who prosecutors

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Mounting Backpage Convictions

As convictions begin to mount we are here to keep you up to date on the latest developments of the Backpage scandal Tony Ortega has been so curiously quiet about since the subpoenas first started rolling out.

Today we got word of a July 29th sentencing date being set for the sales and marketing director

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The Convictions Begin

We have said from the beginning that many convictions would result from the criminal enterprise once known as Backpage.

This week we witness the start of that justice.

On April 10, 2019, one man from Claymont, Delaware and two from Wilmington were convicted of trafficking minors for sex via Backpage.com throughout Pennsylvania

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Tony Ortega’s Shell Game Lie

Recently we’ve been taking a look at the nefarious, often turbulent, tenure of one Tony Ortega during the dying months of the Village Voice. We saw how under Ortega’s leadership, The Village Voice’s circulation dropped from 240,265 to 213,358 in the space of a year. That’s a crushing 11% drop… and it was only the

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Obstruction of Justice

Obstruction of justice is a phrase we’re hearing a lot in the news today. But it doesn’t just have to do with presidential politics. Obstruction of justice can take many forms. Like that time when Tony Ortega’s sleazy Backpage bosses, Michael Lacey and James Larkin, sold the Village Voice.

They split the

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Tony Ortega and the Backpage: In His Own Words

“Backpage exists solely so that people can freely express themselves—sometimes in ways that make other people uncomfortable. We’re First Amendment extremists that way. Always have been.”

So begins one of Tony Ortega’s many ardent defenses for his sex peddling bosses at the Backpage. “First Amendment extremist”, what is that phrase even meant to convey

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Tony Ortega’s Final Endorsement Words

Tony Ortega

In our article “Tony Ortega’s Village Voice: A Backpage Front” we drew your attention to the grand scheme behind The Village Voice and Backpage, specifically how they were from the beginning planned to be separated in order to fully concentrate on the mega profits produced by Backpage in its lust to sell

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Tony Ortega’s Village Voice: A Backpage Front

“Seven years ago, the people I [Tony Ortega] work for were smart enough to start Backpage.com, a competitor to Craigslist. While other newspapers were doing little more than publicly condemning Newmark for the way Craigslist has, for years, eaten into their classified ads revenue, we decided to fight back. That’s just

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