The underground press in America (1964-1968): Outlining an alternative, the envisioning of an underground

Journal of Communication Inquiry

Volumn 24, Issue 4, 2000, Pages 379-400

  Lewes, James ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0141660137     PISSN: 01968599     EISSN: 15524612     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0196859900024004003     Document Type: Review

References (85)

1. This includes Todd Gitlin and Abe Peck.
2. This includes El Grito Norte, a Chicano underground published in New Mexico; The East Village Other, a counterculture underground, published in New York; and The Old Mole, a movement underground published in Boston.
3. Liberation News Service was founded in September 1967. While the exact date of its formation is unclear, the collective announced in a 26 September mailing, "Well, okay, we couldn't found a brand new press service in two weeks, but damned if we didn't do it in four! Welcome to LIBERATION News Service. " (Liberation News Service Collective, Dear College Members of LIBERATION News Service, Washington DC: The New Media Project, 26 September 1967, 1).
4. The mailings used in this chapter are (1) Letter to Subscribers (25 September 1967); Dear Friends (15 October 1967), (2) Liberation News Service (Speaks) Freaks Out (13 November 1967), (3) Dear Friends (13 November 1967), and (4) Dear Friends (19 December 1967). While most were written by Raymond Mungo and/or Marshall Bloom, they were attributed to either the Liberation News Service Collective or to the New Media Project.
5. The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS) was founded between 29 July 1966, when it was first floated to a reporter from Time magazine, and 29 September 1966, when Walter Bowart, in The Paper, claimed the Underground Press Syndicate served and serviced an "emerging . . . fifth estate. "
6. [See Walter Bowart, "EMERGING: A Fifth Estate," in The Paper, Vol. 2, No. 1 (29 September 1966), 10].
7. David Ransom, "Starting a Community Newspaper," in Mitchel Goodman, ed. , The Movement Toward a New America, Philadelphia: Knopf Pilgrim Press (1971), 426.
8. Joe Korpsak, "What the Underground Press Represents," in Joe Korpsak ed. , Underground Press Guide, Los Angeles: Other Press, 1967.
9. John Clarke, Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson and Brian Roberts, "Subcultures, Cultures and Class: A theoretical overview," in Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds. , Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-war Britain, London, UK: Hutchinson University Library (1986), 11.
10. Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith, "The Movement and the New Media," in Liberation News Service News Packet, No. 144 (1969), 22.
11. Anonymous, "Editorial," in Capitalism Stinks, Vol. 1, No. 1 (25 July 1968), 1.
12. Anonymous, "Editorial," in Mega Middle Myth, Vol. 1, No. 3, (1968), 2.
13. Dick Hebdige, in Subculture the Meaning of Style, notes, "Despite the apparent neutrality of the materials from which they are constructed . . . (structures and environments) . . . carry within them implicit ideological assumptions which are literally structured into the architecture itself. "
14. [Dick Hebdige, Subculture the Meaning of Style, London: Methuen (1979), 12].
15. David Ransom, who edited the Peninsula Observer argued, "Starting a newspaper in your own community presupposes that you have a community you can call your own. Start a paper where you have close ties and when you have made a tentative commitment to long-term local organizing. " [David Ransom, "Starting a Community Newspaper," in Mitchel Goodman, ed. , The Movement Toward a New America, Philadelphia: Knopf Pilgrim (1971), 426].
16. Alternately, Marge Stamberg argues, The papers become the lifeline of the community. Calls pour in. . . . You have to deal with it, you are a participant. You start to ran draft-resistance columns. You seek out and hound sympathetic doctors until they set up a free clinic. You run advice. . . . You thought you were putting out a newspaper, but you've become a community organizer. [Marge Stamberg, "Liberation News Service," in Marc Estrin, ed. , Recreation, New York: Dell (1971), unpaginated]
17. Richard Neville provides the following content analysis of the East Village Other and the Los Angeles Free Press in 1967, 1968, and 1969. In 1967, 5. 6 percent of the East Village Others content was devoted to drugs, which fell to 3 percent in 1968 and to . 9 percent in 1969. Likewise, the Los Angeles Free Press devoted . 8 percent of its coverage to drugs in 1967, which rose slightly to 1. 6 percent in 1968 and had dropped to . 3 percent in 1969. With regard to their coverage of cultural happenings and events, this includes record reviews, the East Village Other devoted 4. 1 percent of its coverage to cultural activities in 1967, 9. 6 percent in 1968, and 13. 1 percent in 1969; likewise, the Los Angeles Free Press devoted 16. 8 percent of its coverage to cultural activities in 1967, 14. 2 percent in 1968, and 11. 2 percent in 1969. With regard to the coverage of politics, the East Village Other devoted 21. 3 percent of its content to it in 1967, 21. 6 percent in 1968, and 19. 9 percent in 1969; likewise, the Los Angeles Free Press devoted 18. 6 percent to politics in 1967, 21. 8 percent in 1968, and 17. 2 percent in 1969. [See Richard Neville, Play Power: Exploring the International Underground, New York: Random House (1970), 155].
18. Raymond Mungo, "The Movement and its Media," in Massimo Teodori, ed. , The New Left: A Documentary History. New York: Bobbs Merrill (1968), 386.
19. See Todd Gitlin, The Whole World Is Watching, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (1980), Introduction.
20. From 1910 to 1914, the IWW newspaper, The Industrial Worker, regularly printed cartoons depicting the press as the willing and subservient mouthpiece of big business. One of these, "Which Paper do you Support?" (Industrial Worker, July 23 1910), featured a Wobbly holding up two news sheets, The Morning Liar and the Industrial Worker.
21. See Joyce L. Kornbluh, Rebel Voices, Chicago: Charles Kerr (1988), 83.
22. Melvyn Small, Covering Dissent: The Media and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press (1994), 2.
23. Marshall Bloom, Liberation News Service (Speaks) Freaks Out, mailing to LNS subscribers 13 November 1967.
24. The fact these communities eventually spread across the length and breadth of the United States can best be illustrated if one compares the towns and cities where these papers were published in 1965 with the towns and cities where these papers were published in 1970. In 1965, when there were only five such underground newspapers, these were restricted to large metropolitan areas - Los Angeles, New York, Berkeley, and Detroit - and college towns - East Lansing. In 1970, according to the Liberation News Service subscription list and Richard Neville's list of Underground and Other Publications of Interest, there were underground and radical publications being published in all 50 states, as well as in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Cuba, Denmark, England, France, Holland, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico, the Republic of Ireland, Scotland, Wales, West Germany, and Yugoslavia.
25. "Already, there are over 360 college, underground and political and hippie newspapers . . . [and] . . . magazines, in the U. S. Canada, Great Britain, Netherlands and Cuba, receiving LNS copy several times a week. " [Liberation News Service Collective, Liberation News Service (Speaks) Freaks Out . . . Again, Washington DC: New Media Project (13 November 1967), 1].
26. See Robert Glessing, The Underground Press in America, Bloomington; London: Indiana University Press (1970), 178-190.
27. Richard Neville, Play Power. New York: Random House (1970), 289-299.
28. See The Reverend Thomas King Forçade, "Introduction," in Mel Howard and King Thomas Forcade, eds. , The Underground Reader, New York: Plume Books (1972), 1
29. Lawrence Leamer, The Paper Revolutionaries, New York: Simon and Schuster (1972), Chapter 3
30. and Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press, New York: Pantheon Books (1985), Chapter 2.
31. See Paul Lawson, "The Non-Electric Circus," in Joseph Berke, ed. , Counter Culture, London: Paul Owen Limited (1969), 344-57.
32. See John Wilcocks, "How the UPS Papers Fill the Gap," in Other Scenes (April 1967), 2.
33. Anonymous, "Underground Alliance," in Time Magazine, July 29 1966, 57. In 1972, Wilcock claimed he had invented the idea of the Underground Press Syndicate while trying to convince the reporter from Time magazine that the press was far more vibrant and threatening than it was at the time. The name had come to him when he spotted an UPS truck parked on the street across from the East Village Other.
34. Anonymous, "Editorial," in Counterpoint, Vol. 1, No. 4 (April 1968), 2.
35. Anonymous, "Editorial," in Connections, Vol. 2, No. 5 (1968), 2.
36. Advertisement for the Voice of the Underground Press in the Williamette Bridge (June 1968).
37. Michael Kindman, "The Underground Press Lives," in The Paper, 8 December 1966, 1.
38. Thorne Dreyer, "The Rag," in Other Scenes, April 1967: 3.
39. Abby Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Paul Krassner in Abe Peck, ed. , Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press, New York: Pantheon (1985), 100.
40. Richard Neville, "All God's Children Got de' Clap!!" in Thomas King Forcade, ed. , Underground Press Anthology, New York: Ace (1972), 179.
41. Raymond Mungo, Famous Long Ago: My life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service, Boston: Beacon (1970), 187-88.
42. Tom Forcade in Abe Peck, Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press, New York: Pantheon (1985), 187.
43. Anonymous, "UPS," in The Paper, 29 September 1966, 10.
44. Anonymous, "The left speak out speaks out leftly," in Left Speak Out, no issue number (1968), 3
45. In a 1974 funding proposal, the collective claimed the Service is clearly filling a need for its particular readership - a thirst for information as well as for spiritual sustenance that comes of reading that the movement is alive. . . . So for many of our subscribers, LNS provides . . . access to the outside world, and our subscribers in turn provide their readers with important access to information. [Liberation News Service Collective, Liberation News Service Fnding Proposal, New York: Liberation News Service (1974), 2]
46. The editor of Canada Goose in Robert Muller and Janet Spahn, eds. , From Radical Left to Extreme Right: A Bibliography of Current Periodicals of Protest, Controversy, Advocacy, or Dissent, Ann Arbor, Campus Publishers (1970), 90.
47. Anonymous, "The Door Is Open," in The San Diego Door, Vol. 1, No. 3 (8-21 February 1968), 2.
48. Tom Coffin, "CHIRP," in The Great Speckled Bird, Vol. 1, No. 1 (15 March 1968), 1.
49. Jeff Shero, "Editorial," in The Rat, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1969), 2.
50. "The plain fact is, so called objectivity is non existent: Establishment papers, with few exceptions present the viewpoint of the haves. " [John Wilcock, "Meet the Press," in Harbinger, Vol. 2 No. 7 (1969), unpaginated].
51. This was even more the case during the Gulf War, where the media had to rely on the military for film footage and news content.
52. Anonymous, in James Lewes, The Visualization of the Columbia Crisis, unpublished Master's thesis, Philadelphia: Annenberg School of Communication, University of Pennsylvania (1990), 29
53. Todd Gitlin, "Sixteen Notes on Television and the Movement," in Triquarterly, No. 23/24 (Winter/Spring 1972), 336.
54. That both the outbreak of the Gulf War and the Marines' arrival in Somalia were timed to coincide with the evening news or that General Electric and Westinghouse both own television networks are neither anomalies nor coincidence. Also, the recent debates in Congress, concerning the merits of the Central Intelligence Agency hiring journalists as agents and sources, highlight the continuing fit between the military and the media. Last but by no means least, this fit has opened up unlooked for avenues for former general officers who previously were restricted to the military industrial complex.
55. Syl Reynolds, "Editor's Outlook," in The Free Statesman, No. 2 (1967), 2.
56. Liberation News Service Collective, Liberation News Service (Speaks) Freaks Out . . . Again, Washington, DC: New Media Project (13 November 1967), 1.
57. John Wilcocks, "Meet the Press," in Harbinger Vol. 2 No. 7 (1969), 2.
58. Walter Foster, "The Workshop," in Free Press of Springfield, No. 1 (1968), 2.
59. Anonymous, "Subscribe Now!" in Something, No. 2 (1968). 2
60. Anonymous, "Our Thing," in Harbinger No. 1 (May 1968), 2
61. Anonymous, "Editorial," in The Electric Newspaper, No. 1 (August 1968), 1.
62. Anonymous, description of the Spokane's Natural, in Joe Korpsak, ed. , Underground Press Guide, Los Angeles: Other Press Publishing Company (1967), 43.
63. As was pointed out by the Liberation News Service Collective, such biased framing meant only that the service and its subscribers could provide . . . [an] . . . alternative . . . for those . . . who are fed up with hearing Time magazine, AP, UPI, NY Times, . . . saying . . . there were "some 25 to 40,000 demonstrators" when we ourselves saw at least twice that many; . . . that "police acted with appropriate restraint" when we saw the guy next to us getting his skull busted; . . . that we "are only bombing military installations," that we are "sincerely working for peace" and that we are "supporting and defending democratic government in Vietnam," when we see our government destroying a countryside, waging an undeclared war of attrition on helpless women, children and farmers in the name of one totalitarian puppet regime after another, with no sane end in sight. [Liberation News Service Collective, Liberation News Service (Speaks) Freaks Out . . . Again, Washington, DC: New Media Project (13 November 1967), 1]
64. Raymond Lewis, "Editorial," in The Black Panther, Vol. 2, No. 6 (14 September 1968).
65. Dale Phillips, "Editorial," in Canada Goose, No. 2 (September 1968), 2.
66. Anonymous, "Who Is the eggman," in The Eggman, No. 1 (1968), 6). The Eggman was a high school underground newspaper published in Monterey, Ca.
67. Society's Child, "Finger, Being an Introduction," in Finger, No. 1 (1968), 1
68. Anonymous, "Dear Everyone," in High School Independent Press Service, No. 3 (7 October 1968), 2.
69. These ensured a regular flow of income as well as the continuation of high rates of circulation.
70. This included New York's The Rat and Atlanta's Great Speckled Bird.
71. David Ransom, "Starting a Community Newspaper," in Mitchel Goodman, ed. , The Movement Toward a New America, Philadelphia: Knopf Pilgrim (1971), 426.
72. Charles E. Clark, "Editorial," in The Black Vanguard, No. 3 (June 1, 1968), 2.
73. Mike Surowiec, "Alienated or Aligned," in The Midwestern Activist [Kalamazoo], No. 2 (1966), 1.
74. Anonymous, "Editorial," in the Williamette Bridge, No. 1 (7-20 June 1968), 2.
75. Anonymous, "God, Zen and Socrates," in Grafiti, No. 1 (1966), 1
76. Anonymous, "Behold the Passion of the Pen," in The Liar, No. 1 (1968), 2
77. Joe DeMaio, "Our Thing," in The Distant Drummer, No. 4 (1968).
78. "Statement of Purpose. " In The Blue Bus [Newtown Sq. ] (1968) Vol. 1, No. 3: 2
79. Marge Stamberg, "About Liberation News Service," in Marc Estrin, ed. , Recreation, New York: Dell (1969), unpaginated.
80. Anonymous, "Editorial," in Black and Red, No. 1, Inside front cover.
81. Anonymous, "Statement of Purpose," in Modern Utopian, Vol. 2 No. 1 (1967), Inside front cover
82. "Remember we're counting on you for . . . papers and stories, and, whenever you have them complaints. " (Liberation News Service Collective, Letter to Subscribers, 25 September 1967)
83. We didn't envision LNS as entirely "our thing," a news service whose ideas and inspirations come entirely from us; we think it will operate best when it reflects the consciousness of many people around the country. . . . So what we need is you - your consciousness, your ideals and your information on what has happened, what you are doing, what will follow. If you have your influence on our minds, we will have your influence on the minds of your brother editors, and on the joint LNS-UPS membership of something like four million. (Liberation News Service Collective, Dear Friends, 19 December 1967)
84. Liberation News Service Collective, Liberation News Service Funding Proposal, New York: Liberation News Service (1974)
85. The use of "honor roll" was a deliberate play-on and cannot be divorced from the report-age of war dead during the first and second World Wars. For example, the Illustrated London News featured a page titled "Honor Roll," with attached pictures of dead First and Second Lieutenants, every week from August 1914 through November 1918.