Space City (newspaper)

Space City!

Cover of the October 28, 1971, issue. Artwork by Kerry Fitzgerald (Kerry Awn).
Type	Biweekly newspaper
Format	Tabloid
Owner(s)	Space City News Collective
Editor	Founding Editorial Collective: Thorne Dreyer, Victoria Smith, Sue Mithun Duncan, Cam Duncan, Dennis Fitzgerald, and Judy Gitlin Fitzgerald
Founded	1969
Ceased publication	1972
Headquarters	Houston, Texas
Circulation	10,000

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.

Dreyer, a Houston native, and Smith had worked together at Liberation News Service (LNS) in New York before coming to Houston to help found Space City!. Other staffers included Bill Narum as Art Director, cartoonist Kerry Fitzgerald (later known as Kerry Awn), and noted music writers and musicologists Tary Owens and John Lomax III.

The first twelve issues of the paper were published under the name Space City News, but, starting with issue No. 13 (Jan. 17, 1970), the name was changed to Space City! (with the exclamation point as a graphical design flourish) when it was discovered that another publication (a UFO newsletter) was already using the name.

Space City! was one of the most important of the second generation of underground papers—developing a reputation for its advocacy journalism, power structure research, and arts coverage. In a 1976 book about modern Texas folklore, Hermes Nye called Space City! "a well written, sprightly sheet... [that] also had an eye for vivid, telling graphics and poetry of a high level." Historian Laurence Leamer wrote about Space City!: "There is a solid intelligence to the reviews and cultural articles... It is a radical journalism grounded in fact... resolved and balanced in content and full of common purpose..."

Thorne Dreyer, speaking at Zine Fest Houston in June 2009, said that Space City! served as a center for Houston's countercultural community, spinning off a number of alternative institutions including several high school underground newspapers, a food coop, a drug crisis center, and a community-run rock venue called Of Our Own. “The main thing about Houston was that it was all spread out... What Space City! did was to help to identify all these pockets of progressive politics and kindred spirits, and pull them together into a cohesive...network."