Editing Underground Press Syndicate

{{Short description|Network of countercultural newspapers and magazines}}
{{Infobox company
| name = Underground Press Syndicate
| logo = 
| type = Syndication
| industry = 
| fate = Defunct
| predecessor = <!-- or: | predecessors = -->
| successor =  Alternative Press Syndicate (APS)
| founded = {{Start date and age|1966}}
| founders = [[Walter Bowart]], [[John Wilcock]], [[Art Kunkin]], [[Max Scherr]], Michael Kindman, and [[Harvey Ovshinsky]]
| defunct = c. {{End date|1978| | }}
| hq_location_city = 
| hq_location_country = 
| area_served = United States, Canada & Europe
| key_people = [[Tom Forcade]]
| products = Underground Press Service
| owner = <!-- or: | owners = -->
| num_employees = 
| num_employees_year = <!-- Year of num_employees data (if known) -->
| parent = 
| subsid = APSmedia
| website = 
}}
The '''Underground Press Syndicate''' ('''UPS'''), later known as the '''Alternative Press Syndicate''' ('''APS'''), was a network of [[counterculture of the 1960s|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.

UPS members agreed to allow all other members to freely reprint their contents, to exchange gratis subscriptions with each other, and to occasionally print a listing of all UPS newspapers with their addresses. Anyone who agreed to those terms was allowed to join the syndicate. As a result, countercultural news stories, criticism, and cartoons were widely disseminated, and a wealth of content was available to even the most modest start-up paper.

Shortly after the formation of the UPS, the number of [[Underground press|underground papers]] throughout North America expanded dramatically. A UPS roster published in November 1966 listed 14 underground papers<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.nuevoanden.com/rag/ups_roster1966.html |title=1966 Underground Press Syndicate Roster|work=[[The Rag]]|date= November 21, 1966}}</ref> — a 1971 roster listed 271 UPS-affiliated papers in the United States, Canada, and Europe.<ref>{{cite book|section-url=http://www.nuevoanden.com/rag/ups_roster1971.html |section=1971 Underground Press Syndicate Roster|title=[[Steal This Book]]|last=Hoffman|first=Abbie|author-link=Abbie Hoffman|publisher=Pirate Editions / [[Grove Press]]|date= 1971|isbn=1-56858-053-3}}</ref> The underground press' combined readership eventually reached into the millions.<ref>{{cite book|last=McMillian|first=John|title=Smoking typewriters: the Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America|year=2011|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-531992-7}}</ref>

For many years the Underground Press Syndicate was run by [[Tom Forcade]], who later founded ''[[High Times]]'' magazine.

== History ==
=== Formation ===
[[File:Dreyer at ups meeting.jpg|thumb|First gathering of member papers, the Underground Press Syndicate, Stinson Beach, CA, March 1967.]]
The Underground Press Syndicate was initially formed by the publishers of five early underground papers: the ''[[East Village Other]]'' (New York City), the ''[[Los Angeles Free Press]]'', the ''[[Berkeley Barb]]'', ''[[The Paper (American newspaper)|The Paper]]'' ([[East Lansing, Michigan]]), and ''[[Fifth Estate (periodical)|Fifth Estate]]'' ([[Detroit]], Michigan).<ref name=Hyperallergic>{{cite news|last=Reed|first=John|url=https://hyperallergic.com/313889/the-underground-press-and-its-extraordinary-moment-in-us-history/|title=The Underground Press and Its Extraordinary Moment in US History|work=[[Hyperallergic]]|date=July 26, 2016}}</ref>

The first official UPS gathering was held at the home of the ''[[San Francisco Oracle]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>s Michael Bowen in [[Stinson Beach, California]], in March 1967, with some 30 people representing a half-dozen papers in attendance.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TPaGnYarRCkC&pg=PA83 |first=Walt |last=Crowley|title= Rites of Passage: A Memoir of the Sixties in Seattle|publisher=University of Washington Press  |date=1997 |isbn=978-0295974934}}</ref>

The meeting was chaotic and largely symbolic, and the concept was amorphous. It was hoped that the syndicate would sell national advertising space that would run in all five papers, but this never happened.{{cn|date=December 2022}} As [[Thorne Dreyer]] and Victoria Smith wrote for [[Liberation News Service]] (LNS), the formation of UPS was designed "to create the illusion of a giant coordinated network of freaky papers, poised for the kill". But, they added, "this mythical value was to be extremely important: the shoes could be grown into," and the emergence of UPS helped to create a sense of national community and to make the papers feel less isolated in their efforts.<ref>{{cite news|last1=Dreyer|first1= Thorne|first2=Victoria |last2=Smith|url=http://www.nuevoanden.com/rag/newmedia.html|title=The Movement and the New Media|publisher=Liberation News Service|date=March 1, 1969}}</ref>

[[Walter Bowart]] and [[John Wilcock]] of the ''East Village Other'', with Michael Kindman of ''The Paper'', took the lead in inviting other papers to join. ''The [[San Francisco Oracle]]'', ''[[The Rag]]'', and the ''[[Illustrated Paper]]'' (a psychedelic paper published in [[Mendocino, California]]) joined soon afterward, and membership grew rapidly in 1967 as new papers were founded (such as the ''[[Chicago Seed (newspaper)|Chicago Seed]]'')<ref name=Peck>{{cite book|author-link=Abe Peck|last=Peck|first= Abe|title=Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of the Underground Press|location=New York|publisher=Pantheon Books|date= 1985}}</ref> and immediately joined. First-hand coverage of the [[1967 Detroit riot]]s in ''[[Fifth Estate (periodical)|Fifth Estate]]'' was one example of material that was widely copied in other papers of the syndicate. 

The first paper in the deep South to join was ''[[The Inquisition (underground newspaper)|The Inquisition]]'' ([[Charlotte, North Carolina]]). ''Fluxus West'', a [[Fluxus]] offshoot mostly engaged in [[mail art]] and self-publishing activities, founded by [[Ken Friedman]], was also one of the newest UPS members in 1967.{{efn|Friedman stated: 
{{cquote|"''Fluxus West'', for example, was one of the six or seven founding publishers of the Underground Press Syndicate in 1967, but we never gained any traction on the way the papers were designed or what they dealt with. Even though we can be found in the first lists of founding papers, along with the ''East Village Other'', the ''Berkeley Barb'', and the ''Los Angeles Free Press'', we vanish from history soon after because our focus was so vastly different. Did we exert a role in developing the concept of an alternate press? Yes. Did we have any real part in the way the press developed? Perhaps we did, at least in a small way. Did we succeed in directing serious attention to cultural issues beyond the standard underground press focal points of rock music, drugs, sex, and new left politics? Not hardly".<ref>{{cite book|last=Friedman|first= Ken|section=Fluxus: A Laboratory of Ideas|editor-last=Baas|editor-first=Jacquelynn|title=Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life|location=Hood Museum of Art, [[Dartmouth College]]|publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]]|date=2011|isbn=978-0226033594}}</ref>}}}}

=== Expansion ===
By June 1967, a UPS conference in [[Iowa City, Iowa|Iowa City]] hosted by ''[[Middle Earth (newspaper)|Middle Earth]]'' drew 80 newspaper editors from the U.S. and Canada,{{cn|date=December 2022}} including representatives of [[Liberation News Service]]. LNS, founded by [[Marshall Bloom]] and [[Ray Mungo]] that summer, would play an equally important and complementary role in the growth and evolution of the underground press in the United States.

An attempt that summer by Bob Rudnick to coordinate and centralize the UPS at the offices of the ''East Village Other'' in New York City failed.{{cn|date=December 2022}}

=== Forcade assumes leadership ===
Soon after, [[Tom Forcade]] took leadership of the organization, opening an office on West 10th Street in New York City, at which UPS curated the underground press collection for regular [[microfilming]] as well as publishing the '''UPS News Service'''. 

Offices were relocated to [[Miami]] during the summer of 1972 to cover the [[1972 Democratic National Convention|Democratic]] and [[1972 Republican National Convention|Republican Conventions]], both of which were held in that city that summer. 

By the fall of 1973, the syndicate's offices were located at 283 West 11th Street. The magazine's [[post office box]] was Box 386, [[United States Post Office (Cooper Station)|Cooper Station]], New York, NY.<ref name=HT2015>{{cite web|department=Culture|title=6 1/2 Things You Didn't Know About High Times|first=Rex|last=Weiner|work=High Times|date=9 October 2014 |url=https://hightimes.com/culture/6-12-things-you-didnt-know-about-high-times/amp/}}</ref>

Under Forcade's leadership, UPS would later also publish the ''Underground Press Revue''.

=== The UPS and the women's liberation movement ===
As the underground press movement evolved, [[second-wave feminism|women's liberation]], initially a non-issue in the male-dominated underground press, became an increasing focus. The UPS passed the following resolutions at its 1969 conference:

{{quote|
# That male supremacy and chauvinism be eliminated from the contents of the underground papers. For example, papers should stop accepting commercial advertising that uses women's bodies to sell records and other products, and advertisements for sex, since the use of sex as a commodity specially oppresses women in this country. Also, women's bodies should not be exploited in the papers for the purpose of increasing circulation.
# That papers make a particular effort to publish material on women's oppression and liberation with the entire contents of the paper.
# That women have a full role in all the functions of the staffs of underground papers.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Underground Press in America|first=Robert J. |last=Glessing |publisher=Indiana University Press|date=1970|page=65}}</ref>}}

These resolutions were a harbinger of staff rebellions by women that split several papers, including ''[[Rat (newspaper)|Rat]]'', where the feminist faction seized control of the paper for several issues. A few papers, already weakened by staff burnout, poor finances, and other factors, died in the wake of these schisms, while others lost revenue and circulation by barring sexual content and advertisements, which in any event were increasingly being spun off into tabloid sex papers like ''[[Screw (magazine)|Screw]]''.{{cn|date=December 2022}}

=== Underground comix ===
Almost from the outset, the Underground Press Syndicate supported and distributed [[underground comix]] strips. Cartoonists and strips syndicated by the organization included [[Robert Crumb]],<ref name=Rosenkranz>{{cite book |last=Rosenkranz |first=Patrick |title=Rebel Visions: The Underground Comix Revolution 1963-1975 |year=2008 |publisher=Fantagraphics Books |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=XyBmDAAAQBAJ&dq=%22mr+natural%22+yarrowstalks&pg=PA71 | isbn=9781560974642 |pages=71}}</ref> [[Jay Lynch]],<ref>{{cite news|last=Rosenkraz|first=Patrick|title=FEATURES: Jay Lynch, 1945-2017|work=The Comics Journal|date=Mar 6, 2017}}</ref> [[Ron Cobb]], [[Frank Stack]],<ref name=UMOlibrary>{{cite web|url=http://library.missouri.edu/specialcollections/bookcol/comic/stack/|title=Special Collections and Rare Books: Frank Stack Collection|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170417194552/http://library.missouri.edu/specialcollections/bookcol/comic/stack/ |archive-date=2017-04-17|publisher=University of Missouri Libraries|access-date= Dec 29, 2016}}</ref> and [[The Mad Peck]]'s ''Burn of the Week''.

Meanwhile, other cartoonists whose work appeared in UPS-member papers, such as the ''[[East Village Other]]'' and the ''[[Berkeley Barb]]'', saw their work widely distributed, eventually leading to success in the underground comix industry. Ironically, however, reprints became popular with publishers because underground artists originally had few [[Creator ownership in comics|claims on their own work]].<ref name="Sabin-92">{{cite book |last=Sabin |first=Roger |year=1996 |title=Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels: A History Of Comic Art |chapter=Going underground |publisher=[[Phaidon Press]] |location=[[London]], [[United Kingdom]] |isbn=0-7148-3008-9 |page=92 |url=https://archive.org/details/comicscomixgraph00sabi |url-access=registration}}</ref> The open-ended permissions given by UPS were exploited by some underground comix publishers, bulking up or entirely filling their own magazines with work whose creators didn't receive any payment even when those publishers made a profit.

=== UPS becomes the Alternative Press Syndicate ===
The explosive growth of the underground press had begun to subside by 1970, and by 1973 the boom was clearly over.<ref name=Hyperallergic /> After a 1973 meeting of member newspapers in [[Boulder, Colorado]], the name of the syndicate was changed to the '''Alternative Press Syndicate''' (APS).

APS members sorely needed revenues, and in 1973, Richard Lasky, ex-''[[Rolling Stone|Rolling Stone Magazine]]'' Advertising Director of the successful San Francisco-based weekly, and Sheldon (Shelly) Schorr of ''Concert Magazine'', published in several cities,{{citation needed|date=December 2016}} created a national advertising media selling company, '''APSmedia'''. 

APSmedia placed advertising primarily from record and stereo companies with success, placing more than 350 pages of advertising for many of the publications in the bigger markets in the first year. As cities were in the major markets, it mostly sold ads into publications without the advertisers knowing anything more than the names of the client papers.{{cn|date=December 2022}} In 1976, APSmedia dissolved.

=== Dissolution ===
By 1974 most underground newspapers in the U.S. had ceased publication.<ref name=Peck /> APS limped along but had gone defunct by 1978; succeeded almost immediately by the [[Association of Alternative Newsweeklies]], founded in [[Seattle]].

Although many of the members of the Underground Press Syndicate/Alternative Press Syndicate were founded when the legendary urban underground papers were already dead or dying, their influence resonated through the 1970s and beyond, both in the proliferation of urban [[alternative weeklies]] and in scores of eclectic papers founded in small towns and suburbs. For example, Long Island's ''[[Moniebogue Press]]'' and ''Suffolk StreetPapers'' offered general audiences alternative perspectives on local news and culture, while ''Akwesasne Notes'' (published 1968–1992,<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.aidhp.com/items/browse?collection=1&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CTitle&sort_dir=a|website=American Indian Digital History Project|title=Akwesasne Notes}}</ref> 1995–{{circa}} 1997)<ref>{{cite web|url=https://ratical.org/AkwesasneNs.html|website=Ratical.org|title=Akwesasne Notes}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=akewsasnenotes|website=The Online Books Page|title=Akwesasne Notes|editor-first=John Mark |editor-last=Ockerbloom}}</ref> specialized in [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] politics, including issues of peace and ecology.

==See also==
* [[Counterculture of the 1960s]]
* [[List of underground newspapers of the 1960s counterculture]]
* [[Ray Mungo]]
* [[Rip Off Press Syndicate]]
* [[Thorne Dreyer]]
* [[Underground press]]

==Further reading==
*Charnigo, Laurie. "Prisoners of Microfilm: Freeing Voices of Dissent in the Underground Newspaper Collection."  ''Progressive Librarian'' (2012): 41-90. 
* {{cite book|editor-last=Wachsberger|editor-first=Ken|url=http://www.azenphonypress.com/books/voices2.html|title=Voices from the Underground|volume=2: A Directory of Resources and Sources on the Vietnam Era Underground Press|publisher=Mica Press|date=1993|isbn=978-1879461024}} — has article about the Underground Press Syndicate and other period alternative news services

== Notes ==
{{notelist}}

==References==
{{reflist}}

== External links ==
* [http://www.nuevoanden.com/rag/ups_letter.html ''The Rag'' and the Underground Press Syndicate.] — in a letter dated October 5, 1966, Thorne Dreyer announces the birth of ''The Rag'' to members of the Underground Press Syndicate.

{{Hippies|state=collapsed}}
{{Counterculture of the 1960s|state=collapsed}}

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:1966 establishments in the United States]]
[[Category:Alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States| ]]
[[Category:Counterculture of the 1960s]]
[[Category:History of Marin County, California]]
[[Category:News agencies based in the United States]]
[[Category:Newspaper associations]]
[[Category:Print syndication]]