 Cover of the first issue of The Paper (December 1965) | |
| Type | Underground newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Weekly |
| Founder(s) | Michael Kindman |
| Founded | December 1965 |
| Political alignment | Radical |
| Language | English |
| Ceased publication | May 20, 1974 (as Joint Issue) |
| City | East Lansing, Michigan |
| Free online archives | msupaper |
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. [1]
Started by Michigan State University student Michael Kindman as a radical, counterculture alternative to the official MSU campus newspaper, The Paper was sympathetic to the politics of SDS. [2] Initially tolerated by the Michigan State University school administration, The Paper briefly received funding from a campus publications board before controversial content caused it to be banned from the MSU campus, but it continued to grow in popularity after the ban.
In the summer of 1966, shortly after the founding of UPS, Kindman met Thorne Dreyer and Carol Neiman from the University of Texas at an SDS summer project in San Francisco and told them about The Paper. Afterward, on their return to Austin, Texas, they were inspired by Kindman's example to found their own pioneering radical college underground paper, The Rag , which was to play an important role in the development of the underground press around the country.
The Paper continued publishing on a regular basis for several years, generally circulating about 5,000 copies. In late 1967, founder Michael Kindman left East Lansing for Boston, where he joined the Mel Lyman Family and briefly served as managing editor of Boston's leading underground paper, Avatar , before its demise. [2]
The Paper continued to appear under that name until June 1969. It subsequently went through a number of title changes, including goob yeak gergibal and Generation East Lansing, before merging with another paper, the Bogue Street Bridge, to form Joint Issue, which lasted until May 20, 1974. The successor to Joint Issue was the Lansing Star, a local alternative paper that was published at first weekly and later biweekly and monthly until 1983, when it was succeeded by Lansing Beat, which survived until at least November 1986.
In the Spring of 1966, MSU students James Friel and Stuart Jones, working from an idea by fellow student Steven Badrich, whom they had met at a fund-raising party at Kindman's house, created the comic strip Land Grant Man. Land Grant Man would appear on a nearly weekly basis for the next two years, and sporadically after that. Friel drew all installments of the strip. Jones was succeeded as writer by Jane Munn, and later by several others, including Friel. Land Grant Man, beginning in May 1966, was an early example of underground comics, although its style owed more to the "straight" Marvel comics of the period than to any countercultural influence.[ citation needed ]
The Seattle Liberation Front, or SLF, was a radical anti-Vietnam War movement, based in Seattle, Washington, in the United States. The group, founded by the University of Washington visiting philosophy professor and political activist Michael Lerner, carried out its protest activities from 1970 to 1971. The most famous members of the SLF were the "Seattle Seven," who were charged with "conspiracy to incite a riot" in the wake of a violent protest at a courthouse. The members of the Seattle Seven were Lerner, Michael Abeles, Jeff Dowd, Joe Kelly, Susan Stern, Roger Lippman and Charles Marshall III.
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 East Village Other was an American underground newspaper in New York City, issued biweekly during the 1960s. It was described by The New York Times as "a New York newspaper so countercultural that it made The Village Voice look like a church circular".
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 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 Great Speckled Bird was a counterculture underground newspaper based in Atlanta from 1968 to 1976 and 1988 through 1990. Commonly known as The Bird, it was founded by New Left activists from Emory University and members of the Southern Student Organizing Committee, an offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society. Founding editors included Tom and Stephanie Coffin, Howard Romaine and Gene Guerrero Jr. The first issue appeared March 8, 1968, and within 6 months it was publishing weekly. By 1970 it was the third largest weekly newspaper in Georgia with a paid circulation of 22,000 copies. The paper subscribed to Liberation News Service, a leftist news collective. The office of The Great Speckled Bird at the north end of Piedmont Park was firebombed and destroyed on May 6, 1972. In a letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books, Jack Newfield et al. noted that the bombing occurred after the paper published an exposé of the mayor of Atlanta.
Notable Michigan State University student riots occurred during the late 1990s and early 2000s (decade). The most recent riot occurred in 2021.
The history of Michigan State University dates back to 1855, when the Michigan Legislature established the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan under the encouragement of the Michigan State Agricultural Society and the Michigan Farmer, the state's leading agricultural periodical. As the first agricultural college in the United States, the school served as a model for other institutions of its kind established in the period, to give an instance, the Agricultural College of Pennsylvania.
The State News is the student newspaper of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. It is supported by a combination of advertising revenue and a $7.50 refundable tax that students pay at each semester's matriculation. Though The State News is supported by a student tax, the faculty and administration do not interfere in the paper's content. The State News is governed by a Board of Directors, which comprises journalism professionals, faculty and students. In 2010, the Princeton Review ranked The State News as the #8 best college newspaper in the country. And in 2015, the Society of Professional Journalists named TSN as the nation's best daily college newspaper for 2014.
The Bugle or Bugle-American was an underground newspaper based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Distributed throughout the state from September 1970 to 1978, it was published weekly for most of that time for a total of 316 issues. The Bugle, an early example of the alternative newsweekly genre, was less radical than the city's other underground newspaper, Kaleidoscope, although it was not viewed that way by the local media such as the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel.
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.
Avatar was an American underground newspaper published in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1967–1968. The newspaper's first issues were published from the headquarters of Broadside magazine in Cambridge.
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 Kudzu was a counterculture underground newspaper published in Jackson, Mississippi starting in September 1968. Promising "Subterranean News from the Heart of Ole Dixie" and offering a blend of hip culture and radical politics, it was founded by members of the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), a student activist group affiliated with SDS. Founding editors were Cassell Carpenter, David Doggett, and Everett Long, students at Millsaps College in Jackson. Despite harassment by police and city officials it survived until May 1972.
Willamette Bridge was an underground newspaper published in Portland, Oregon from June 7, 1968, to June 24, 1971. In the spring of 1968, several groups of people in Portland were discussing starting an "underground" newspaper in Portland, similar to the Los Angeles Free Press or the Berkeley Barb. They were partially motivated by a frustration with the reporting in the mainstream press, which was still supporting the Vietnam war, opposing progressive movements like the United Farmworkers Union, and showed no understanding at all of the growing "Counterculture" and its music, dress and mores. On the other hand, they saw many things going on in the city that were positive, but isolated- Antiwar activity at Reed College, "Hippies" gathering around Lair Hill park, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party gathering strength, craft stores and head shops opening around town, local bands like The Great Pumpkin and The Portland Zoo giving concerts. A newspaper could bring these groups together and break the information monopoly of the daily papers.
Ann Arbor Argus was a radical, counterculture biweekly underground newspaper published in Ann Arbor, Michigan, starting January 24, 1969, and lasting until mid-1971. It was founded and edited by underground journalist Ken Kelley (1949–2008), a 19-year-old University of Michigan student who lived at the Trans-Love Energies commune off campus. The paper was started by Kelley and a friend out of his apartment, but soon moved into well-furnished office space provided by the Episcopal Church half a block from the university campus, in the basement of Canterbury House, a church-run coffee-house, and later relocated into a two-story house at 708 Arch Street. The Argus was closely connected to John Sinclair's radical White Panther Party and the Students for a Democratic Society. It was a member of the Underground Press Service and the Liberation News Service. It had no connection to the earlier 19th century Ann Arbor newspaper of the same name. Circulation in 1969 was reported at 14,000 copies.
Hundred Flowers was an American 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.
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.
Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships and parliamentary procedure, the founders conceived of the organization as a broad exercise in "participatory democracy". From its launch in 1960 it grew rapidly in the course of the tumultuous decade with over 300 campus chapters and 30,000 supporters recorded nationwide by its last national convention in 1969. The organization splintered at that convention amidst rivalry between factions seeking to impose national leadership and direction, and disputing "revolutionary" positions on, among other issues, the Vietnam War and Black Power.
Dock of the Bay was a radical New Left underground newspaper published weekly in San Francisco starting July 29, 1969. It was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service. At least 17 issues were printed on a weekly basis from June 29, 1969, to November 25, 1969, when further publication was curtailed. Founded by young radicals and SDS members associated with the New Left activist paper Movement, staffers included Steve Diamond of the Liberation News Service. Controversy with other participants in the underground press movement in the Bay Area developed when some of the Dock of the Bay staff were involved in a side project to launch a separate paper to be called the San Francisco Sex Review with the idea that profits from sex ads could be used to subsidize Dock of the Bay and other New Left projects in San Francisco. This project was aborted after a clash with feminists, and Dock of the Bay ceased publication shortly afterward.