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A.J. Liebling’s sardonic adage, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one” [New Yorker, May 14, 1960, p. 105-12], was taken to heart in the 1960s, when political and cultural activists, otherwise denied access to mainstream media, sought the means of creating their own “underground presses.” The twentieth century ushered in the third major technological transformation in the history of printing — the invention of the offset press. (The fourth — the Internet — has created even more recent sweeping changes in communication). This new technology offered an inexpensive, rapid way to reproduce the written word photographically. Now anyone with a typewriter and some imagination could publish a newspaper, no longer requiring extensive capital to do so. At the same time, the photographic technique allowed for innovation of design not previously available. Early underground newspaper editors rejected the rigid black and white columns of the mainstream press to create their own distinctive, colorful, somewhat chaotic look.
East Village Other.
Vol.2, no.10, 1967 (NY:
Joint College of Patarealism) ©East Village Other Inc.Type was not always justified, but often flowed in and around the illustrations. The latter were often created through the technique of collage, another underground press innovation. Colors were allowed to bleed into one another by utilizing the “split fountain” technique of inking, thus creating unusual color effects. Any and all graphic methods were used to grab the attention of readers (paralleling the often crude and deliberately provocative language within) and, in many instances, to shock “straight” America out of its complacency. These printing techniques created a visible expression of cultural revolution in America during a turbulent and confusing time.
Some of the earliest 1960s underground papers were the East Village Other, San Francisco Oracle, Los Angeles Free Press, Berkeley Barb, and The Paper, of East Lansing, Michigan. Sensing the growing importance and readership of the underground press, the editors of these five papers formed the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), which quickly grew to include other papers.
Underground Press Syndicate. Directory. ([Phoenix, Arix.]:
Orpheus Magazine, [1969?]) Written and edited by Thomas King ForcadeCreating a truly workable network of underground papers, UPS members shared copyrights, exchanged information and breaking news reports, and collectively attracted major advertisers.
In 1967, Raymond Mungo attended a meeting in Czechoslovakia among radical journalists and representatives of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam. Resulting from talks on how to increase pressure at home to end United States involvement in the Vietnam War, Mungo and a friend, Marshall Bloom, founded the Liberation News Service (LNS). Paralleling mainstream wire services, such as United Press International, LNS sent twice-weekly news packets of articles and photographs to member underground publications. With its worldwide contacts among Western radical groups and Third World liberation forces, LNS gave the underground press a global perspective it had formerly lacked.
Liberation News Service, No. 126,
1968 (NY: Liberation News Service)Editors of early underground newspapers often disagreed on the extent to which cultural vs. political issues should be covered in their respective newspapers. Where the San Francisco Oracle was unquestionably a beacon of counter-cultural lifestyles, Old Mole, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, offered primarily political analysis. Other newspaper editors and staff viewed the relationship between politics and culture as inseparable and covered both fronts. Some papers, such as Helix (Seattle), Kaleidoscope (Milwaukee) and Distant Drummer (Philadelphia), changed their focus from culture reporting to confrontational politics beginning with the 1967 Vietnam Summer, then back again to inward, personal, alternative lifestyle coverage.
City of San Francisco Oracle. Vol.1, no.5, 1971
(San Francisco, CA: Oracle
Co-operative Pub. Co.)
Poster design © Michael Bowen; photo, Casey SonnabendThis issue of the San Francisco Oracle announces “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In.” One of the first “happenings” to bring together large numbers of alienated youth, the Be-In at Golden Gate Park was a precursor to later massive anti-war and campus demonstrations.
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![Underground Press Syndicate. Directory. ([Phoenix, Ariz.]: Orpheus Magazine, [1969?] Written and edited by Thomas King Forcade](UndPrSynDir_small.jpg)
