Underground Press Syndicate
| Syndication | |
| Fate | Defunct |
| Successor | Alternative Press Syndicate (APS) |
| Founded | 1966 |
| Founder | Walter Bowart, John Wilcock, Art Kunkin, Max Scherr, Michael Kindman, and Harvey Ovshinsky |
| Defunct | c. 1978 |
|
Area served
|
United States |
|
Key people
|
Tom Forcade |
The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in mid-1966 by the publishers of five early underground papers: the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free Press, the Berkeley Barb, The Paper, and Fifth Estate. As it evolved, the Underground Press Syndicate created an Underground Press Service, and later its own magazine. For many years the Underground Press Syndicate was run by Tom Forcade, who later founded High Times magazine.
A UPS roster published in November 1966 listed 14 underground papers, but within a few years the number had mushroomed. A 1971 roster, published in Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book, listed 271 UPS-affiliated papers in the United States, Canada, and Europe. According to historian John McMillian, writing in his 2010 book Smoking Typewriters, the underground press' combined readership eventually reached into the millions.
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. And 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. First-hand coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots in Fifth Estate was one example of material that was widely copied in other papers of the syndicate. It was hoped that the syndicate would sell national advertising space that would run in all five papers, but this never happened.
The early papers varied greatly in visual style, content, and even in basic concept — and emerged from very different kinds of communities. Many were decidedly rough-hewn, learning journalistic and production skills on the run. Some were militantly political while others, like the San Francisco Oracle, featured highly spiritual content and were graphically sophisticated and adventuresome. According to historian Abe Peck, The Rag in Austin was the first to successfully merge countercultural content with radical politics, and "to represent the participatory democracy, community organizing and synthesis of politics and culture that the New Left of the midsixties was trying to develop."
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