A mimeograph machine was a low-cost duplicating machine that worked by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process was called mimeography, and a copy made by the process was a mimeograph.
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing for producing many copies by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against individual sheets of paper or a continuous roll of paper. A worker composes and locks movable type into the "bed" or "chase" of a press, inks it, and presses paper against it to transfer the ink from the type, which creates an impression on the paper.
The terms underground press or clandestine press refer to periodicals and publications that are produced without official approval, illegally or against the wishes of a dominant group. In specific recent Asian, American and Western European context, the term "underground press" has most frequently been employed to refer to the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in India and Bangladesh in Asia, in the United States and Canada in North America, and the United Kingdom and other western nations. It can also refer to the newspapers produced independently in repressive regimes. In German occupied Europe, for example, a thriving underground press operated, usually in association with the Resistance. Other notable examples include the samizdat and bibuła, which operated in the Soviet Union and Poland respectively, during the Cold War.
The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines that operated from 1966 into the late 1970s. As it evolved, the Underground Press Syndicate created an Underground Press Service, and later its own magazine.
The Oracle of the City of San Francisco, also known as the San Francisco Oracle, was an underground newspaper published in 12 issues from September 20, 1966, to February 1968 in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of that city. Allen Cohen (1940–2004), the editor during the paper's most vibrant period, and Michael Bowen, the art director, were among the founders of the publication. The Oracle was an early member of the Underground Press Syndicate.
The Los Angeles Free Press, also called the "Freep", is often cited as the first, and certainly was the largest, of the underground newspapers of the 1960s. The Freep was founded in 1964 by Art Kunkin, who served as its publisher until 1971 and continued on as its editor-in-chief through June 1973. The paper closed in 1978. It was unsuccessfully revived a number of times afterward.
The Berkeley Barb was a weekly underground newspaper published in Berkeley, California, during the years 1965 to 1980. It was one of the first and most influential of the counterculture newspapers, covering such subjects as the anti-war movement and Civil Rights Movement, as well as the social changes advocated by youth culture.
Kaleidoscope was an underground newspaper that was published in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA]. Founded by John Kois, the radio disk jockey Bob Reitman and John Sahli, it was published from October 6, 1967, to November 11, 1971, printing 105 biweekly issues. The paper's first issue was printed with a borrowed $250 in an edition of 3,500 copies, which sold out in two days.
The Rag was an underground newspaper published in Austin, Texas from 1966–1977. The weekly paper covered political and cultural topics that the conventional press ignored, such as the growing antiwar movement, the sexual revolution, gay liberation, and drug culture. It encouraged these political constituencies and countercultural communities to coalesce into a significant political force in Austin. As the sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the first underground paper in the South, The Rag helped shape a flourishing national underground press.
The Washington Free Press was a biweekly radical underground newspaper published in Washington, DC, beginning in 1966, when it was founded by representatives of the five colleges in Washington as a community paper for local Movement people. It was an early member of the Underground Press Syndicate. Starting in December, 1967 they shared a three-story house in northwest Washington with the Liberation News Service, the Washington Draft Resistance Union, and a local chapter of the anti-draft group Resistance. A print shop was in the basement, and other activist groups used the space and got their mail there. The paper's original founders and editors included Michael Grossman, Arthur Grosman and former State Department computer programmer William Blum, but the staff went through many changes and by 1969 nobody on the paper was even acquainted with any of the original founders.
The Paper was a weekly underground newspaper published in East Lansing, Michigan, beginning in December 1965. It was one of the five original founding members of the Underground Press Syndicate.
Max Scherr was an American underground newspaper editor and publisher known for his iconoclastic 1960s weekly, the Berkeley Barb.
Rising Up Angry was a radical youth movement organized as a militant community organization based in working class communities in Chicago, parallelling but not part of the Weatherman Underground and Revolutionary Youth Movement currents in New Left politics at the end of the 1960s.
The Berkeley Tribe was a radical counterculture weekly underground newspaper published in Berkeley, California from 1969 to 1972. It was formed after a bitter staff dispute with publisher Max Scherr and split the nationally known Berkeley Barb into new competing underground weeklies. In July 1969 some 40 editorial and production staff with the Barb went on strike for three weeks, then started publishing the Berkeley Tribe as a rival paper, after first printing an interim issue called Barb on Strike to discuss the strike issues with the readership. They incorporated as Red Mountain Tribe, named after Gallo's one gallon finger-ringed jug of cheap wine, Red Mountain. It became a leading publication of the New Left.
Space City! was an underground newspaper published in Houston, Texas from June 5, 1969 to August 3, 1972. The founders were Students for a Democratic Society veterans and former members of the staff of the Austin, Texas, underground newspaper, The Rag, one of the earliest and most influential of the Sixties underground papers. The original editorial collective was composed of Thorne Dreyer, who had been the founding "funnel" of The Rag in 1966; Victoria Smith, a former reporter for the St. Paul Dispatch; community organizers Cam Duncan and Sue Mithun Duncan; and radical journalists Dennis Fitzgerald and Judy Gitlin Fitzgerald.
Hundred Flowers was an underground newspaper published in Minneapolis, Minnesota from April 17, 1970 to April 4, 1972. It was produced by a communal collective, with the main instigator being antiwar activist and former Smith College drama instructor Ed Felien. The 16-page, two-color tabloid was published weekly and cost 25 cents, circulating about 5,000 copies.
Illustrated Paper was a monthly psychedelic underground newspaper published in Mendocino, California from June 1966 to April 1967. Initially issued under the title The Paper, it became the Illustrated Paper with its third issue. Philip A. Bianchi and Walter D. Wells were the editors. It was one of the earliest members of the Underground Press Syndicate (UPS).
Tuesday's Child was a short-lived counterculture underground newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, in 1969–1970. Self-described on its masthead as "An ecumenical, educational newspaper for the Los Angeles occult & underground," it was founded by Los Angeles Free Press reporter Jerry Applebaum, Alex Apostolides, and a group of Freep staffers who left en masse after disagreements with Art Kunkin to found their own paper. Tuesday's Child was edited by Chester Anderson.
Thorne Webb Dreyer is an American writer, editor, publisher, and political activist who played a major role in the 1960s-1970s counterculture, New Left, and underground press movements. Dreyer now lives in Austin, Texas, where he edits the progressive internet news magazine, The Rag Blog, hosts Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM, and is a director of the New Journalism Project.
Abe Peck is a magazine consultant, writer, editor and professor, known for having been an editor and writer at the Chicago Seed underground newspaper from 1968 to 1971.
