Columbus Free Press

The Columbus Free Press is an alternative journal published in Columbus, Ohio since 1970. Founded as an underground newspaper centered on anti-war and student activist issues, after the winding down of the Vietnam War it successfully made the transition to the alternative weekly format focusing on lifestyles, alternative culture, and investigative journalism, while continuing to espouse progressive politics. Although published monthly, it has also had quarterly, bi-weekly and weekly schedules at various times in its history, with plans calling for a return to a weekly format by the end of 2014.

The early Columbus Free Press was the culmination of a string of attempts to launch an antiwar underground newspaper in Columbus, which included the Free University Cosmic Cosmic, Gregory, The People Yes, Renaissance, and Purple Berries. None of these efforts had survived for more than six months. The Free Press (still alive in greatly altered form in its forty-fifth year) was founded by a large cast of volunteers including Steve Abbott, Bill and Sandi Quimby, Paul Ricciardi, Steve Conliff, Cheryl Betz, John Hunt, and Roger Doyle, with many others; some of the early founders were on the staff of the Ohio State University library. The first issue, dated Oct. 21, 1970, was printed in a run of 2,000 copies and sold for fifteen cents.

Initially the Columbus Free Press was an eclectic liberal-pacifist paper, less militant than Purple Berries, which had been founded in the aftermath of the Kent State Massacre and an 18-day student strike at Ohio State. After Purple Berries published its last issue in December some of its staff joined the Free Press. In the early days the paper's distribution center, drop-off point and unofficial hangout was a High Street headshop called Tradewinds; and after several members of the staff were arrested in May 1972 and the regular office seemed unsafe the paper was produced for a time in the basement of Tradewinds.

The Free Press survived the ending of the Vietnam War, which deprived many underground papers of their raison d'être, and in 1974 it raised its print run from 2,000 to 10,000 copies and became an advertiser-supported free giveaway newspaper, following a model that was being adopted by many other alternative papers around the country.

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