Former stripper Michelle Peacock was exonerated by a jury of all charges on Tuesday, the Nashville Scene reports. Peacock is seeking at least $25,000 in compensatory and punitive damages from reporter P.J. Tobia, the Scene, and its parent company in a defamation suit over an October 2007 story which cited an arrest report detailing the alleged prostitution.
The Scene and staff writer P.J. Tobia were hit Wednesday with a defamation suit filed by a former stripper in response to a story published last October, the Nashville City Paper reports. Scene parent company City Press LLC, which is owned by Village Voice Media, was also named in the suit. Michelle Peacock alleges that Tobia's representation of her in the article resulted in injury to her character and reputation, and she's seeking at least $25,000 in compensatory and punitive damages. In the story, Tobia cited a police report that stated Peacock twice "offered to manually stimulate (an undercover cop) until ejaculation for $100 U.S. Dollars." According to the suit, Peacock "continues to suffer a diminution in her earnings and earning capacity" since the strip club refused to allow her to continue working there after the Scene story was published.
P.J. Corkery, who was editor of the Phoenix in the early 1970s, died Saturday at Stanford Hospital in California after fighting non-Hodgkins lymphoma for two years, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. He was 61. After the Phoenix, Corkery went on to have a long and fruitful journalism career -- he was a columnist for the San Francisco Examiner, the author of the best-selling Carson: The Unauthorized Biography, and wrote for numerous newspapers and magazines. He also served as a judge for 2001's AltWeekly Awards.
