Editing United States Student Press Association

{{Short description|National organization of campus newspapers and editors}}
{{Infobox company
| name =  United States Student Press Association
| logo = 
| type = Journalism association
| industry = [[Student publication]]s
| fate = Defunct
| predecessor = <!-- or: | predecessors = -->
| successor = 
| founded = {{circa}} 1962
| founders =
| defunct = {{circa}} 1971
| hq_location_city = [[Washington, D.C.]], US
| hq_location_country = 
| area_served = United States
| key_people = [[Roger Ebert]] (1963–1964)<br />[[Marshall Bloom]] (1967)
| products = 
| owner = <!-- or: | owners = -->
| num_employees = 
| num_employees_year = <!-- Year of num_employees data (if known) -->
| parent = [[National Student Association]]
| subsid =  [[Collegiate Press Service]]
| website = 
}}
The '''United States Student Press Association''' (USSPA) was a national organization of [[campus newspapers]] and editors active in the 1960s. A program of the [[National Student Association]] (NSA), the USSPA formed a national [[news agency]] for college publications called [[Collegiate Press Service]] (which eventually spun off on its own, lasting until the late 1990s).

Based in Washington, D.C., the USSPA held a national convention of college student newspaper staff each summer at a member college campus, and a national student editors conference in Washington each year during the academic year. 

It was later revealed that the USSPA was underwritten by clandestine funding from the [[Central Intelligence Agency|CIA]] and [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]] organizations like ''[[Reader's Digest]]''.<ref name="cia">{{cite news|last=Crewdson|first=John M.|date=December 27, 1977|title=C.I.A. established many links to journalists in U.S. and abroad |newspaper=The New York Times|page=1|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1977/12/27/archives/cia-established-many-links-to-journalists-in-us-and-abroad-cias.html|accessdate=January 20, 2009}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|chapter=Muckraking Gadflies Buzz Reality|title=Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press|editor-first=Ken|editor-last=Wachsberger|date=2011|series=Voices from the Underground, Part 1|publisher= [[Michigan State University Press]]|first=Chip|last=Berlet|author-link=Chip Berlet|isbn=978-0870139833|location=[[East Lansing, Michigan]]|pages=282}}</ref>

In 1967 journalist [[Marshall Bloom]] was designated as heir apparent to USSPA's executive director position, but his push to send student editors to [[Cuba]] and defy the U.S. travel ban led the incumbent executive director and other national staff to withdraw their endorsement and support. Bloom sought to win the position at USSPA's annual meeting in [[Minneapolis]] in August 1967 but lost a close vote of all student editor representatives to another candidate. 

As a result of the vote, Bloom was purged from the USSPA.<ref name=Leamer>{{cite book|last=Leamer|first=Laurence|title=The paper revolutionaries: the rise of the underground press|year=1972|publisher=Simon and Schuster|location=New York|isbn=978-0-671-21143-1}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last=Glessing|first=Robert J.|title=The underground press in America|url=https://archive.org/details/undergroundpress00gles|url-access=registration|year=1970|publisher=Indiana University Press|location=Bloomington|isbn=978-0-253-20146-1}}</ref> Soon afterward, Bloom and his colleague [[Ray Mungo]] formed the [[alternative news agency]] [[Liberation News Service]].<ref name=McMillian>{{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><ref>{{cite book|last=Mungo|first=Raymond|title=Famous long ago: my life and hard times with Liberation News Service|year=2012|publisher=University of Massachusetts Press}}</ref>

USSPA later became independent, then suffered financial setbacks in the early 1970s, and disbanded.

== Notable members ==
* [[Roger Ebert]] served as the second president of the USSPA<ref>{{cite news|last=Martin|first=Douglas|url= https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/movies/roger-ebert-film-critic-dies.html |title=Roger Ebert Dies at 70; a Critic for the Common Man|work=New York Times|date=April 4, 2013}}</ref> in 1963–64<ref>{{cite web|last=Ebert|first= Roger|url= https://archives.library.illinois.edu/ebert/files/2017/02/1966-04-15-RE-JBR-full-1.pdf |title=Mr. James B. Reston, Washington Bureau, The New York Times... <nowiki>[</nowiki>letter from Ebert to James Reston<nowiki>]</nowiki>|publisher=U. of Illinois Archives |date=Apr 15, 1966}}</ref>
* Harry Nussdorf, of [[Queens College, City University of New York]], served as chair of the USSPA National Executive Board 1969–1970{{citation needed|date=February 2019}}

==References==
=== Notes ===
{{Reflist}}

=== Sources ===
* [http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-no2008106189/ Librarians Disambiguation Pages for USSPA], WorldCat

{{Authority control}}

[[Category:Student organizations in the United States]]

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