Digging the Underground Press: 1960s alternative newspapers were the oxygen for era's movements

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Digging the Underground Press
The Sixties’ scrappy alternative newspapers were the oxygen that kept the era’s movements going.

By Richard Greenwald


History books rarely speak as trenchantly to contemporary issues as John McMillian’s Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford University, February). As the cascading revolts in the Muslim world demonstrate, communication systems matter.

Communication is the oxygen of social movements, but scholars have rarely focused attention on the organs of social protest. In the 19th century, the labor and radical movements all had their own press, as did various ethnic communities, and each was vital to its cause. The medium has changed (from small magazines, to cheaply printed local community newspapers to Twitter), but the message is the same: Social movements need organic forms of communication because without it, they die.

Smoking Typewriters chronicles the pioneers of what today we call “independent media.” McMillian meticulously mines the rich archive of the alternative press to reveal these newspapers as products of their era, tied to activist communities as well as powerful personalities, and linked through ideology and more than a little hustle and business moxie. During the Sixties (the author refers to the era as the Sixties, and the decade as the ’60s) such newspapers became the lifeblood of the movement, connecting both isolated pockets of resistance and individuals to larger communities and happenings in Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor and New York. They told the world what was going on.

These pioneers, angered by the mainstream press, sought to create their own version of the news, a true alternative. McMillian profiles the founders of famed ’60s papers, such as Art Kunkin, a counterculture figure whose LA Free Press (the “Freep”) provided sophisticated coverage of the 1965 Watts Riots. We see the dynamic duo of Ray Mungo and Marshall Bloom, who founded the Liberation News Service, a sort of alternative Associated Press, which published weekly news. We also learn how John Wilcock willed the Underground Press Syndicate into being. We see the egoism, petty fights and arrogance, as well as the real fiscal woes of these organizations. ............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7078/digging_the_underground_press

[KT2000]

1. You better believe it

Right now there is a vacuum - no competition for the corporate press. There is nothing to shame them.

These papers were popular too.

[xchrom]

2. A trip down memory lane ... Nt

[jwirr]

3. Weren't The Nation and Mother Jones lasing examples of 60s

alternative papers?

[former9thward]

4. Neither one.

The Nation is 150 years old and never has had the type of counter culture articles and focus that alternative papers had. Mother Jones started in the late 70s and is a monthly politics and expose type magazine. Not really the same as weekly alternative papers.

[cliffordu]

5. Rolling stone.

[jwirr]

9. Okay - that one I recognize from back then.

[Fuddnik]

6. East Village Other, Berkely Barb, a few others

Yipster Times was good, but doesn't really qualify.

[hobbit709]

7. The old Austin Rag was one.

I know quite a few of the people that were involved with it.
They're still around as a blog
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/

[ellenrr]

8. Any woman remember the women's paper out of Denver?

I can't remember the name of it, it was in the '80's and very radical and radicalizing.
I'll post the name if it comes to me.