American Library Association

The New Journalism

Author(s): James Ridgeway
Source: American Libraries, Vol. 2, No. 6 (Jun., 1971), pp. 585-592
Published by: American Library Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25618361 .
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american

by
sort of journalism
is tak
in
America.
Most
ob
ing
shape
Anew
viously it represents a reaction, even
mass
to the established
rebellion,
circulation press and to the culture
that press represents.
and politics
But the papers and magazines which
reflect this tendency are different
from one another and they are apt
to suddenly change or even disap
pear. Perhaps the best way to under
is to look
stand the new journalism
at some of the major
influences.
Among themost important was the
rise of Ramparts as a pioneering rad
ical,

counter-culture

mass

circulation

Ramparts was
magazine.
of its style?hip
because
cisco?and
ports?Don

muckraking
Duncan's

influential
San Fran
radical

revelations

re
of

his life as a Green Beret in Vietnam,

the CIA-NSA
liaison, Diem's odd in
and
trigues with Cardinal Spellman
the Vietnam
lobby.
In the early 1960s Ramparts was
a Catholic magazine
with a circula
tion of four thousand. By 1968,when
a former publicity
Warren Hinckle,
man, had done his best, the paper
had a circulation of a quarter of a
and was
million
tottering towards
bankruptcy with debts of more than
one million dollars.
In part, Hinckle

James

libraries

585

Ridgeway

made Ramparts
by turning himself
into a news item. During a domestic
air strike, Hinckle was
stranded in
Chicago but had to get to New York.
Taxis
So he flew there via London.
were
too much
trouble to hail, so
a chauffeur-driven
hired
Hinckle
limousine instead. He checked into
suite at the Algonquin,
the Ramparts
to do business
from
then descended
the bar. Outside in the lobby swoon
of publishers,
society
ing groups
ladies, and reporters would wait to
be summoned to table where Hinckle
the latest scoop in
describe
would
i.e., getting the goods on
progress,
On one hot
LBJ, the Pope, NATO.
editors
seriously con
tip Ramparts'
sidered digging up a body buried in
a Brooklyn grave in order to docu
ment a conspiracy theory. Ramparts
seldom broke stories in the maga
the
zine, but more often announced
most prized expose's through adver
tisements in the New York Times or
If the press of
Post.
Washington
New York or Washington were other
PR
the Ramparts
wise
occupied,
or
to
Milwaukee
team would
fly
and give out the story
Cleveland,
announced
its CIA
there. Ramparts
NSA expose' in a New York Times
itself
ad. By the time the magazine

its story
appeared on the newsstand,
seemed dull and dated when com
to the reams
of material
pared
in the newspapers.
Ram
appearing
as
re
to
also
acted
parts
tipster
offer
porters on major newspapers,
ing them hot tid-bits in return for
name.
the magazine's
In
mentioning
as
the
slid
towards
1968,
paper
and
bankruptcy, Hinckle
departed
launched Scanlan's
which
monthly,
so far hasn't caught fire in the same
did.
way Ramparts
a great influence on
had
Ramparts
other magazines
It pop
and papers.
ularized muckraking
and provided
a model
for the cloak and dagger
"investigative reporting" teams estab
lished by newspapers
after the CIA
NSA expose'. Dugald Sturmer, Ram
parts art director, was employed by
to improve their
other magazines
Jann
Wenner, who launched
makeup.
the successful Rolling Stone, worked
for Ramparts and possesses Hinckle's
flair for advertising. Ramparts
itself
under
the bankruptcy
reorganized
laws, and struggles along, a more
stolid, serious publication.
Another magazine with a far more
serious political influence than Ram
Under
parts is the New Republic.
the editorship of Gilbert Harrison,

586

June 1971

the New Republic has built itself into

a widely read political paper. It also
exercises
considerable
in
political
fluence inWashington.
In part, this
own political
is due to Harrison's
interests which
put him in close
touch with liberal and moderate poli
the Democratic
Ad
ticians. During
of Kennedy and John
ministrations
of the paper
son, correspondents
were well received in the offices of
leaders. Long before
Administration
were
in other
they
popularized
wrote
New
the
papers,
Republic
about and argued for auto and tire
environmental
safety, and attacked
first
The New Republic
pollution.
the
and
emergence
reported
analyzed
the
of the New Left, and provided
early, systematic criticisms and re
ports on the Vietnam war. The paper
is widely read by political leaders in
but also finds its way
Washington,
down into the layers of the govern
In some respects
ment bureaucracy.
the New Republic has shed its liberal
intellectual aura and is now the po
litical paper of the "New Class, those
and technocrats who
professionals
or Kennedy,
and
backed McCarthy
who in 1970, found themselves turn
ing populist with Ralph Nader."
important influ
Surely the most
ence in journalism has been the rise
Street Journal to the
of the Wall
national
position of a commanding
paper with a reputation very much
or the Times of Lon
like LeMonde
don. The Journal, with its conserva
success
tive origins, is an economic
of shrewd foresight in tak
because
of electronic publish
ing advantage
it offers most parts
and
because
ing
of the country fast news of the stock
But the paper's reputation
markets.
is based on the news coverage, which
and
to explain economic
attempts
cultural events briefly and clearly.
so many other papers
and
Unlike
the Journal reporters ex
magazines,
readers.
plain events to nonspecialist
the
take
the
Journal
of
Readers
whatever
paper
seriously because,
their politics,
they trust its judg
ment.

occurrence
most spectacular
was
the
in recent
journalism
The
of the under
overnight emergence
ground press. There are about two
hundred underground
papers with
an estimated circulation of six mil
of the
The backbone
lion or more.

is the Liberation News Ser

business
vice (LNS), headquartered
in New
York City. LNS was begun in 1967
Bloom and Ray Mungo,
by Marshall
of Amherst
and Boston
graduates
Both had
University
respectively.
been editors of student newspapers,
to head up
and Bloom was meant
the United States Student Press As
sociation, but he was deemed to be
too radical and never got the job.
In its early days LNS was more hip
than political, and in 1968 after the
to New York
from
service moved
a
broke
battle
bitter
Washington,
out among the staff over the proper
course for the service.
In
political
the end, one faction led by Mungo
and Bloom made off to a Massachu
setts farm with the money and equip
ment. The other group stayed in New
York, formed a collective, and began
to publish a news service. For a time
there were two LNS. But soon Bloom
and Mungo
gave up.
(Mungo now
farms and writes books. Bloom com
mitted suicide in November
1969.)
LNS offers a radical critique of
The service
American
institutions.
now mails
of news a
two packets
to eight hundred
subscribers.
week
papers pay twenty dol
Underground
lars a month, overground papers and
An LNS packet,
institutions more.
twenty pages or
usually containing

so, includes reports, political analy

sis, comics, cartoons, photographs,
8, 1970
recipes, etc. The October
the
for instance, contains
packet,
second part of a long interview with
in which she describes
Leila Khaled,
a guerrilla.
to become
her decision
There are several reports on the vari
ous Panther trials under way. There
is an unusual report released by the
of an interview between
Tupamaros
their members and Dan Mitrione, the
in Uru
U.S. police expert working
guay. (After the interview was made,
A
killed Mitrione.)
the Tupamaros
note from Timothy Leary announces
his escape from prison and warmly
The pack
endorses theWeathermen.
et includes an account of Jimi Hen
drix's death and a report on the
Young Lords with special reference
towards women.
to their attitude
have
reached
would
This
packet
most underground editors before the
established press published the news,
and indeed, the big papers probably
picked up the Leary note from LNS.
The LNS reports from abroad are
The
often interesting and useful.

tend to cull the best

correspondents
then add
from the foreign press,
their own first-hand accounts.
In
some instances
established
foreign
correspondents write directly for the
on the
concentrates
service.
LNS
fronts and
different revolutionary
has run stories from correspondents
behind guerrilla lines in Jordan. Just
as Nixon was moving into Cambodia,
an excellent
LNS was
distributing
war
on
the
Indochina
report
by
the
LeMonde
DeCornoy,
Jacques
correspondent who had recently re
turned from the Far East. The LNS
piece was an excerpt from a radio
had
its correspondents
interview
and provided
made with DeCornoy,
and political
the sort of historical
on the war which was
background
not available
in U.S. papers at the
time. LNS covers the underground
at home with a continuing stream of
It provided ex
reports and analysis.
the
of
tensive coverage
university re
the service is spotty
volts. However,
on economic
news, and relies on
rhetoric instead.
as propa
the news
views
so
as
for
Time
Just
long never
ganda.
ran articles critical of the Vietnam
not
LNS
probably would
policies,
run articles suggesting the "revolu
tion" is disintegrating. But taking its
an in
line into account,
political
or
with
maga
any paper
evitability
zine, LNS provides a useful source
and
of information on opposition
radical
LNS

revolutionary politics.
Press
The Underground
Syndi
formed in 1966 in
cate (UPS) was
Phoenix and it serves as a sort of
conglomer
publishers
underground
the energetic
ate.
Tom
Forcade,
leader, describes UPS as an "appli
ance.
It does not attempt to speak
for any underground paper's political
or cultural views or act as their con
science. UPS is part of the plumbing
which does things which
somebody
has to do, but nobody wants to. We
are

an

administrative

group,

re

search
watch-dog
organization,
agency, and an information bureau.
We are not the national headquarters
of a political
party, nor are the
in
Membership
papers
chapters."
dol
a
one-time twenty-five
UPS costs
lars. The association helps members
issues
their back
by microfilming
and selling an underground
press
library to libraries. It then pays the
their share of the
different papers
UPS created and
take.
microfilming

american

libraries

587

during the 1960s, and greatly admired

column. The
for the Dr. Hippocrates
Los Angeles Free Press proved one
a lot of money
in the
could make
But the most
underground business.
important single influence on the un
press was
by
provided
derground
the
and his paper,
Paul Krassner
Influenced by his friend,
Realist.
really first
Lenny Bruce, Krassner
freak-anarchist
the
pulled
together
tendencies.

^^^^^^
.. .

p^^B
^^^^att^^^^m

^^^^^^^^H

it is usual to separate "cul

While
this
tural" from "political"
papers
since all
is a dubious
distinction,
tend to reflect in one
publications
or
another
radical or revolution
way
ary politics. Thus, in the summer of
1969, the papers were given over to
the split-up in SDS, then to the de
of Weatherman,
repres
velopment
sion of the Panthers and other radi
cals.
By the spring of 1970, the
consumed
press was
underground
Liberation mat
with the Women's
ter. Some papers, such as RAT, were
others such
taken over by women;
as the Old Mole went through pain
and
ful reexaminations,
emerged
to
struggle against male
promising
an
chauvanism.
("The Old Mole
nounces that itwill no longer accept
or
that use
letters
manuscripts
language

runs an advertising
service which
provides a substantial amount of in
come to many underground
papers.
Intertribal News Service
(FRINS),
a biweekly news packet, is published
by the Free Ranger Tribe, which con
FRINS
sists of some UPS members.
goes out to underground papers but
also is sent to radio stations in the
hope of developing an underground
consciousness
among them. Members
of UPS promise not to copyright ar
ticles. Copyright is a form of proper
are opposed
ty and UPS members
to it.
It is difficult to keep track of the
different underground
be
papers
cause they come and go so fast. But
over
the past
few years
certain
papers stand out. They include the
Old Mole, Cambridge; Great Speckled
Bird, Atlanta; RAT, New York; San
Francisco Express Times. Others in
the same vein are Kaleidoscope,
Seed, Chicago; NOLA Ex
Milwaukee;
and Space City,
press, New Orleans;
Houston.
These papers have been
successful at reflecting the interests

of their communities, which means

they have brought together the freak,
anarchist, and political revolutionary
constituencies
the counter
within
interest
culture. Many of the most
are
most
and
papers
ing
enduring
southern:
The Bird,
City,
Space
Dallas
NOLA
Notes, Rag.
Express,
(The original RAT was begun by Jeff
Shero, a Texan.)
They have an easy,
native populist-radical
quality which
strive to imitate but
other papers
somehow fail to achieve. Writers for
these papers are deft at parody, and
the papers are wildly funny. They in
and in
clude a bit of muckraking,
the power struc
frequently discuss
ture in imitation of C. Wright Mills.
People argue about the antecedents
of the underground papers. The Vil
lage Voice is the oldest of the papers.
John Wilcock, who wrote a column
on the avant-garde,
for the Voice
the
papers de
helped
underground
He
the
Voice
to launch
velop.
quit
the East
Other, and then
Village
went on to begin Other Scenes.
The
was
imitated
Barb
widely
Berkeley

such

as

emasculation,

cas

let
courage,
tration, balls to mean
'Dear Sir' or 'Gentle
ters addressed
or other examples
of male
men'
language.")
supremacist
Women's
papers have sprung up
are at
all around the country?there
least twenty-five of them now pub
they are the center of
lishing?and
attention in the underground
press.
These papers generally have a dis
cast and in one
tinctly puritanical
way or another argue for developing
a separatist movement.
In doing so
the radi
the
of
they reflect
politics
cal lesbians, who are the most ener
getic and interesting group within
at this writing. The
the movement
the same in
papers are often much
content;
reports or
they include
short stories describing some grizzly
sex act the author has been made to
endure by a male chauvanist pig. It
the Berkeley paper,
Ain't Me Babe,
told how an exotic dancer had come
and told
to the Women's
Liberation
to perform
how she had been made
sex acts
and degrading
unnatural
with men at a bachelor's party held
in honor of a groom before his wed
ding. The women decided to expose

588

June

1971 :
-_?^

this sort of thing, and wrote up

broadsides describing the "rape" and
handed them out to the members of
the wedding party.
The letters are a bit less propa
the RAT carried a long
gandistic:
letter from a woman who said her
new lesbian lover was
just as ma
as
her former
and
devious
nipulative
boy friend. She had tossed him out
but
for the sake of the movement,
for what good.
Women, a quarterly magazine
pub
is one of the
lished in Baltimore,
most widely regarded liberation pub
lications. The contents of the Fall
1970 issue tend to reflect a good deal
of the thinking of the women's press.
That issue contains a literary analy
sis of Dickens,
Joyce, Hemingway,
which
and Shakespeare
Faulkner,
one
in
all
concludes
way or an
they
male
other
took an uninformed,
Vir
view of women.
chauvanistic
is viewed as a humanist,
ginia Woolf
although the author says Woolf was
obviously intelligent. Louisa May Al
cott is warmly praised. Her heroines
to
often did not marry. According
the author this may have been be
cause Alcott was
influenced by her
home life. There her father kept her
mother in a state of abject captivity.
Women
goes on to attack capital
ist fairy tales as thinly disguised
male supremacist propaganda.
(Snow
White cleaned house for not one but
seven dwarfs.)
In an editorial, Wo
men says art is for the rich and has
no meaning
for the masses.
Thus,
art should be redefined and given
new political direction as part of a
collective enterprise.
Most of the women's papers follow
the approach of Women, offering bits
and pieces of politics and history,
looked at from the feminist perspec
for a collective
tive, and arguing
movement.
The papers generally re
flect the interests of what appear to
be upper class, white intellectuals.
the most interesting work
to come out of the underground
Among
press are the research reports. These
emanate

from

various

groups

or

col

lectives and generally aim to provide

a more
of
detailed
understanding
American institutions from a radical
the re
point of view. Oftentimes
search is carried out as part of an
attempt to organize political actions.
The North American
Congress on

is the most
Latin America
(NACLA)
formidable of these groups. NACLA
was formed after the Dominican
in
vasion by a handful of young people
in an effort to develop some sort of
coherent
of U.S.
foreign
analysis
The organi
America.
in
Latin
policy
zation has offices in New York and
Berkeley and publishes a newsletter
as well as a periodic press packet
The
for the underground
papers.
ten
NACLA
Newsletter,
published
times a year with fifteen hundred
in the U.S., Latin Ameri
subscribers
carries useful and
and
ca,
Europe,
not otherwise available reports about
In
in Latin America.
U.S. operations
ran
past issues, NACLA Newsletter
in
of the way
thorough accounts
which the Catholic Church operates
indus
the Hanna
in Latin America,
in
trial empire's control over mines
Brazil as well as its power over the
finances of the Republican
Party.
NACLA has published details of the
in
Bank of America's
agribusiness
volvement in Latin America, and de
scribed how the big U.S. communi

cations companies
tied up communi
in Latin countries.
NACLA
cations
also provides special reports on uni
versity ties with the Pentagon. More
the relation
recently it publicized
between
departments
ships
police
in the United States.
and universities
Recently NACLA began publishing
a packet of news about Latin Ameri
ca for the underground papers. This
sort of service, offered free to papers
which can't afford to pay, is unique.
and newsmaga
Most
daily papers
zines in the U.S. have, at best, spotty
coverage of Latin America. NACLA's
and it is
service is comprehensive,
one of the reasons the group's work
the
is so highly respected within
CIA.
NACLA staffmembers will consult
local groups on request, and
with
NACLA helped establish Africa Re
Like
in Cambridge.
search Group
Africa
Research
NACLA,
Group
makes available periodic reports and
influ
studies on U.S. and European
ences in Africa.
The HEALTH/PAC
Bulletin, pub

._, american

studies on government and industry

the young
made by Nader's Raiders,
under Ralph
attorneys who work
The
Nader's
general
supervision.
best of these are published as books.
come
to
Two which
immediately
are the Chemical
Feast
mind
by
James Turner
and Our Vanishing
is a
One
Air by John Esposito.
other
the
of
chemicals
in
food,
study
an angry indictment of the nation's
air pollution programs.
papers are cheap to
Underground
is one of the main
produce, which
reasons

are

there

so many

of

them.

with a car
to set type.

Any typewriter equipped

bon ribbon can be used
the alleged right-wing poli
Despite
tics of printers' unions, the papers
are printed cheaply and quickly. And
of
intricate drawings
papers with
bombs, replete with dirty stories and
pictures of people engaged in various
sex acts are printed all the time.
author of The
Robert
Glessing,
in
Press
America, a re
Underground
cent and excellent study of the un
derground press, describes the print
ing cost of an average paper in some
detail:

Most underground papers operate on

a total budget of five hundred to one
thousand

dollars

per

The

issue.

penditures of the San Francisco

lished monthly by the Health Policy

Advisory Center, New York City, of
fers the same sort of thorough re
search on the medical
profession,
on de
with
special concentration
radical
veloping
empires?complexes
of hospitals,
doctors, and corpora
tions within the city of New York.
is at the center of a
HEALTH/PAC
movement which aims to turn over
governance of the health industry?
clinics, hospitals, delivery systems?
to the communities most
directly
affected.

Another research group producing

is the Council
interesting material
on Economic Priorities. With offices
at Washington
and New York City,
the council produces books and short
studies of various industries. These
include an examination
of firms
sell antipersonnel
which
weapons
and a recent investigation of pollu
tion problems in the paper industry.
The reports are factual and contain
financial data which must
be in
terpreted.

Finally

there

is

the

series

of

Times

with

sand

copies

run
a press
is closer

of

twelve

to

the

newspaper?$20

underground

papers
sixteen-page
for
per
page
negatives
There
is no make-ready
sand,

ex

Good
thou

average
thou
per

$6.50
plus
and
plates.
for
charge

runs of over five thousand, and a $35

base fee is charged for color plus $2.50
per thousand. Most publishers in this
study charge $50 base fee for color
plus the $2.50 per thousand. Thus the
average printing bill for publishers of
Good Times is $350 to $400 "up front"
per

issue

unless

front" is a

they

run

color.

"Up

libraries

589

provides an underground paper with

of a linotype ma
all the capabilities
chine for a fraction of the cost.
The key to success of underground
papers lies in their distribution
sys
tem. In most large cities and towns
of papers
and maga
distribution
zines?even
books?is
controlled by
one or two major companies.
These
operators are not usually willing to
their monopoly
endanger
by selling
papers which may be attacked by
the police as pornographic,
thereby
As a
their business.
endangering
whatever
the
practical matter,
poli
tics involved, it is a terrible problem
getting distributors to handle under
ground papers. Sometimes
theywant
in advance;
money
they always are
inefficient, late in payment. The un
derground press gets around this by
an alternative
established
having
street salesforce.
It depends on the
street culture
for youngsters who
come into the paper's office, buy one
hundred
for half the price,
copies
then hawk them on the corner for
the full cover price.
In some cities
have
such wide
underground papers
that
distribution
operations
spread
who get a few
there are wholesalers
cents per issue for hauling bundles
to far-away spots where youngsters
pick them up for street sales. Thus,
every successful underground
paper
is sold with a distribution mecha
nism fully equal to that of the big
gest daily. The papers appeal to the
counter culture community but they
are widely
sold
to straight
also
people because
they generally include
sex ads, a smattering of
personal
pornography, and, in recent months,
adventure
stories
about
exciting
Weatherman
dashing
guerillas. They
the
also have good comics. Without
sharply reduced printing costs and
of a street salesforce,
development
it is doubtful
that underground
so wide
papers could have become

term used by printers of

underground papers
indicating they
must be paid in advance of publication.
If a paper wants
to look really
spread.
rent an IBM
it may
professional,
for about $150 a month.
composer
This machine
for dis
is in effect an electric
mechanisms
seem
a
with
device
typewriter
tributing papers
pretty
coding
Alternative
which
enables
to set
the operator
grim as our experience with Hard
Times
tends to suggest. When we
justified lines, that is, even lines of
were
still editors at the New Re
type, in a variety of different type
fonts. This machinery
is made
and
public in 1967, Andrew Kopkind
by
several companies, but the IBM sys
I joined with other journalists
in
tem generally works
a
to
out
well
in
for
very
plans
attempting
lay
national newsmagazine
with radical
deed, and unlike other firms, IBM
to raise money
provides free and fast service when
politics.
Attempts
there is a breakdown.
for such a project were futile. (At
The composer

590

June 1971

the time wealthy

liberals were split
of
ting away from radicals because
the Israeli War
and beginnings
of
black
Instead
separatist
politics.)
we joined with Robert
Sherrill
in
a
paper
launching
four-page weekly
a newsletter?called
?really
May
left this
day. Sherrill subsequently
paper, and its name was changed to
Hard Times because of a trademark
to
Times attempted
dispute. Hard
on power politics
carry muckraking
as well as coverage of the revolution
ary-freak scene as it unfolded here
and abroad.
Initially the paper was
backed
Gross
warmly
by Richard
man and Michael
Loeb of Grossman
Publishers. They invested some mon
ey themselves, and persuaded others
to join in. Without
their help, we
probably would never have been able
to start Hard Times.
(Incidentally,
while we talked of doing books with
them, the only book published was
with World, not Grossman.)
Hard Times was designed by Sam
to look like a newspaper.
Antupit
costs ran to about five
Production
hundred dollars per issue, including
three hundred
dollars
for printing
and mailing. Our printing costs were
higher than they might have been
because we used a good grade of
paper, and also because Hard Times
was
sent out
second
class mail.
second class is the least ex
While
of mailing,
and in
pensive method
tended to help subsidize small pub
lications such as ours, it necessitates
special sorting and bundling, which
with a small list runs up costs. Our
circulation
reached
be
eventually
tween five and six thousand
sub
scribers, and almost all of them were
solicited by direct mail promotion.
Originally we had wanted to stay clear
of direct mail because
of the pitch.
The paper,
But it was unavoidable.
with no pictures or comics, no sex
ads, only four pages, directed at a
never
not local audience,
national
sold much on newsstands. Magazine
in a few sub
advertising
brought
scribers, but not enough to build a
list. Our paper probably
subscription
never would
have been especially
wasn't
It
acid-rock, or street
popular:
or
liberal intelligent
radical,
fighting
tried to deal with these dif
sia. We
ferent tendencies, and, in the pro
cess, to develop a sort of coherent
radical analysis of the society. The
to
point is, the paper never appealed
a clearly defined set of people. We

fell into direct mail and that process

very largely ruined the paper.
It costs between
seventy-five and
ninety dollars per thousand to mail
out a direct mail promotion.
The
return on such a
usual commercial
is 1 percent.
(The direct
mailing
mail people will tell you the return
can be much higher, but in my ex
perience, these claims are not to be
taken with any seriousness.)
With
a 1 percent return it's necessary
to
send out letters to 100,000 people to
At the
get a thousand subscribers.
seven
cost
this
least
will
about
very
thousand
The
dollars.
return, if
the
you're
lucky, will
just cover
costs. The paper then must foot the
bill in servicing the subscriber
for
a year. We found at one point that
it cost us $7.50 for every subscriber
we were getting through direct mail.
In effect, the paper pays the direct
a fee, about $7,000,
mail promoter
for one thousand
The
subscribers.
second year around,
things get a
little better, and perhaps 50 percent
of those who
the first
subscribed
will
resubscribe.
year
Thus, to hold
level with five thousand subscribers,
it is necessary to promote to 250,000
people every year. After awhile the
paper may catch on and slowly build
up of its own accord, but this takes
time. You probably have to count
on holding
for at least five years
before that process takes hold.
For awhile the direct mail business
some
results.
If he
is
produces
shrewd, the promotion man will put
with
you on to lists of magazines
in our case left
similar orientation,
liberal. But after a year, these names
are

worn

out,

and

it's

necessary

to

honest, sincere, titillating, blah, blah.

I thought it sounded pretty silly, but
he insisted, and the letter was dis
to ten thousand
libraries.
patched
for the re
We waited
breathlessly
sponse. There were about ten replies
in all.
From time to time we sought to
enlarge our audience by combining
with another paper, actually merging
or making
some
with publications
sort of joint mailing arrangement?
for example,
tying together two bi
so that a sub
weekly publications
two different
scriber would
get
one. Ram
for
of
the
papers
price
we ended
was
and
interested,
parts
up creating a section called Hard
Times in it. They agreed to service
our subscribers, and we became edi
tors of that magazine.

revert to gimmicks, such as the fa

mous person
letter, a whining plea
some
famous
person, sent along
by
to susceptible population groups, i.e.,
executives making over $20,000 living
in the Upper East Side of Manhat
tan. We began sending out famous
letters during the spring of
person
1970. In fact, we sent out several
different famous person
letters, all
all
signed by Dustin Hoffman?who
us to use his
too kindly allowed
name?to
different hot
lists, and
for the money to pour in. It
waited
I even sent out a letter to
didn't.
the Liberation News Ser
It was written by the di
librarians.
rect mail man, who claimed he had
vice reports are a great help
While
to editors of underground
a long experience
in the game and
papers,
at putting to
had been successful
they also have an unfortunate effect.
imi
The papers which rely on LNS
gether just the right sort of pitch:

american

libraries

591

and
the electric
light monopoly,
other West Coast industries. Ronnie
his investigations
Dugger publishes
in the Texas Observer, which has a
national
for its liberal
reputation
on
minded
the South. In
reporting
Boise, Idaho, the Intermountain Ob
server
is a
fine, local weekly
crammed with first-hand reports on
of the
and odd customs
politics
The New Mexico Review,
mountains.
in Santa Fe, offers good
published
first-hand reports on land exploita
tion in the Southwest.
Judged by
these
any usual
political measure,
papers in their reports and analyses
are far more radical than most un
derground papers.
Then there are other recent jour
can't be
nalistic departures which
lumped into any particular category.
of Dispatch
The brief emergence
News Service represented one nearly
successful
effort to break the hold
of UPI and AP on established news
papers, and in the process provide
some fresh, interesting work.
That
occurred when David Opst, manager
of Dispatch,
Seymour
published
Hersh's
expose' of the My Lai mas
sacre. At this writing, Dispatch was

tate one

as the big
another much
in
themselves
repeat
daily papers
on
the
wire
services.
There
relying
is little local reporting, one of the
reasons for beginning under
major
Some of the under
ground papers.
do
reflect the inter
ground papers
ests of freak or radical communities,
but many
of them don't do that
local mouth
either and are merely
for
organs
revolutionary solidarity as
laid down by LNS. When
the LNS
is badly wrong as itwas in exaggerat
ing the influence of first the "Move
ment," and then the "Revolution,"
the papers which
rely on it look
foolish.
do under
Only on rare occasions
ground papers perform the sort of
reporting and analytic functions of
This
say, /. F. Stone's
Weekly.
sort of reporting which generates a
coherent political analysis
is rarely
found, and then most often in small,
local weekly papers of what radicals
would despairingly
refer to as "lib
eral" or populist
Un
persuasion.
happily the great interest in the al

[PhotOS:

ternate

ROBERTHENNESSEY]

these
press hasn't helped
at
much
them
all.
Some
of
papers
are very good indeed, and badly need
assistance.
One
is the Mountain
the Whitesburg,
Eagle,
Kentucky
weekly. With Tom Gish as editor,
the Eagle has tirelessly crusaded
in
behalf of the people of Appalachia,
and especially those in eastern Ken
tucky. Gish
fought strip mining,
argued for safety in deep coal mines,
and for the past ten years has acted
as a one-man public relations agent
to persuade
reporters from national
to come down
and write
papers
about the hell of Appalachia.
Gish
and his wife Pat put the Eagle out
and recently Tom
by themselves,
Bethell gave them a hand with hard
nosed reporting on the coal industry.
Bethell now has begun a biweekly
on the coal
industry called Coal
Patrol, and it is an excellent source
of information on the machinations
In
of the business
in Appalachia.
San Francisco,
the Bay Guardian
comes out once every six weeks, and
on ecology,
it is full of muckraking

sending out stories to seventy major

a weekly
and mails
newspapers,
as
to
well.
Opst also
colleges
packet
as
acts
writers'
books
and
packages
to distribute
agent. He
arranged
stories from Pacific News Service, a
Berkeley outfit which gathers news
from
in the Far East,
especially
within Communist-held
portions of
Even with all this activi
Indochina.
to make
is hard pressed
ty, Opst
ends meet. Newspapers
pay between
a
750-word
for
and
$75
$35
story,
with
and that must be split fifty-fifty
Last year Opst
the writer.
sought
outside financing, and he hopes book
schemes will help keep
packaging

things going.
Since ecology became a big issue,
a string of hysteria papers has ap
peared. Most attempt to exploit the
issue, and are pretty trivial. The
for
best of the lot is Environment,
and
Scientist
called
Citizen.
merly
The articles are well done, informa
in
tive, and generally appear well
advance
of reports on the same
subject in other papers. Reading En
vironment is a good way for an or
dinary person, with no special train
ing in these matters, to keep abreast
the complexities
of and understand
of ecological problems.

592

June 1971

the next ten years there is

likely to be more of an effort
Over
towards building up local papers,
whether they be small town, college,
or underground.
this
If anything
will
because
be
reinforced
tendency
of the spreading interest in environ
mental
issues and because of an en
thusiasm for populist style politics.
forces in publishing pro
Economic
vide compelling reasons for not cre
The
ating more big slick magazines.
costs of publishing and distributing
are already
enor
these monsters
mous.
There is little room for ma
neuvering in cutting costs: Printing
plants are unionized, and the unions
are locked in a struggle to preserve
the business as they know it. The na
are
tional distribution mechanisms
accessible
virtual monopolies,
only
to those with money and conforming
ideas. More
important, advertisers
are at least
shifting
temporarily
circulation papers
away from mass
and magazines
(note the decline in
and
ad revenue by Life and Look)
smaller
with
maga
experimenting
zines and papers which are directed
to special groups in the population.
Now that the post office threatens to
in the
abandon subsidy to publishers
form of reduced postage rates, pub
lishers are turning to private car
riers, and in all likelihood future en
trance into publishing will require
than it already
even more
capital

does.

papers are momen

Underground
tarily in decline, influenced both by
and
the break-up of the Movement,
has
which
the
recession
sharply
by
from
revenue
reduced
advertising
If the Vietnam
record companies.

war

ends, these papers may disap

pear at an even faster rate. There
may be a reversion to newsletters,
but as indicated
such as Stone's,
a
is
this
above,
fairly expensive busi
with
and
ness,
postal subsidies dis
does not look
future
the
appearing
and LNS
NACLA
bright. Dispatch,
of
the
covering
possibilities
suggest
a mass market of local papers with

national reporting.
that the new
It is always possible
from
turn
will
away
journalism
and
go into
altogether
print media
some electronic form, i.e., radio, TV,
But this is fairly
cable television.
so if the stations
costly, especially
seek to do their own programming.
in this direction would
Any move

depend on some sort of wide scale

government financing, and that does
not appear imminent.
Most
important the underground
press opened up the press to ordi
That
tendency won't
nary people.
the very
be reversed.
Journalism,
best journalism, is not a business for
technicians, but ought
professional
rather to be the natural evocation of
And
every citizen in a democracy.
radi
in that sense the underground
cals have created the basis for real
change.

revolutionary

The

listing of news

is a

and

papers,

reports,

publications

topical

than routine in

of more

terest:

News

Liberation News Service, 160 Clare

twice a
mont Ave., New York, NY;
a
for
month
underground
week, $240
papers. The backbone of the under
press

an

and

service.

invaluable

ground

at

of

the

same

address.
from

interest

Reprints
the under

NACLA Newsletter, P.O. Box 57, Ca

thedral Park Station, New York, NY
10025; $5, 10 times a year. Interesting

in

involvement

of U.S.

analysis
reports,
America.
Latin

Also

special

reports,

including a look at university ties with

the Pentagon, and developing relations

between

universities

Also

and

student's

depart
police
handbook
lay

ing out, step by step, how to research

his university and its relations with
various

other

institutions.

Bulletin, published by
Health/PAC
the Health Policy Advisory Center, Inc.,
17Murray Street, New York, NY 10007;
$7, monthly. Reports on the health in
dustry, with special reference to New
York City.
Africa Research Group, Box 213, Cam
on
bridge, MA 02138. Periodic reports
in
Africa.
imperialism
Papers

NOLA Express, Box 2342, New Or

leans, LA 70116; $3, biweekly. New

Orleans
around

paper.

Revolutionary.

El Grito del Norte, Box 466, Fair

view St., Espanola, NM 87532; $4, bi
weekly. Articles in both English and
Chicano

resistance.

Resisters

League.
nonviolent

Spanish.

WIN, 339 Lafayette St., New York,

NY 10012;; $5, bimonthly. Published by
the War

through

and

"Peace

action."

of In

Panther, Ministry

Box

formation,

2967,

Custom

House,

San Francisco, CA 94126; $7.50, weekly.

paper.

Party

Seed, 2551 N. Halsted, Chicago, IL

60614; $6, biweekly. Underground, hip

community
opposition

underground,
newspaper.

Dallas Notes, P.O. Box 7140, Dallas,

TX 75209; $5, biweekly. Radical/freak.
New Mexico Review and Legislative
Journal, P.O. Box 2328, Santa Fe, NM
87501; $5,monthly. Muckraking reports

all

Space City, 1217 Wichita, Houston,

TX 77004; $5, biweekly. Underground
opposition in Houston.
Great Speckled Bird, 253 North Ave.
N.E., Atlanta, GA 30308; $6, weekly.

land

Southwest
Texas

Observer,

development.
24th
504 W.

St.,

Aus

tin, TX 78705; $7, biweekly. Texas poli

tics from a liberal point of view.
1070
San Francisco Bay Guardian,
Bryant St., San Francisco, CA 94103;
$5, every

press.

Reports

ments.

at a revolutionary

attempt

Liberated Guardian, 14Cooper Square,

New York, NY
10003; $10, weekly.

on

Free Ranger Intertribal News Ser

vice, Box 26, Village Station, New York,
NY 10014. Produced periodically in co
operation with the Underground Press
Syndicate
features

ly. An

radical.

Services

ground

Rising Up Angry, Box 3746,Merchan

dise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654; $5,month

The Black

following

papers.

community

ground

Freedom

BIBLIOGRAPHY
services,

imitated; one of the best under

Widely

or

six weeks

so.

liberal politics.
Maine Times, 13Main
ME
04086; $7, weekly.
vironmental

Muckraking,

St., Topsham,
Excellent en

reporting.

Point of View, 2150 Rexwood, Cleve

land, OH 44118: $5, biweekly. Radical
reporting on Cleveland and industrial

Midwest.

Environment
Environment,

ton, MO
iginal
lems.

Box

P.O.

755,

Bridge

63044; $8.50, monthly.

reporting
A splendid

on

An or

environmental

prob

magazine.

1899 Hubbard
Mother Earth News,
Road, North Madison, OH 44057; $5,
bimonthly. "Heavy emphasis is placed
on

alternative

life

styles

. . . working

with nature and doing more with

less."

Women
Women,

3028 Greenmount

Ave.,

Balti

more, MD 21218; $4, quarterly. Politi

cal analysis and literary criticism.
It Ain't Me Babe, 1126Addison, Berk
eley, CA 94701; $6, every three weeks.
Reports from theWest Coast women's
movement.

Off Our Backs, P.O. Box 4859, Cleve

DC
land Park Station, Washington,
20008; $6, biweekly. Down to earth re

porting.

RAT, 241 E. 14th St., New York, NY

n
Tough
10003; $6, biweekly.
|"| |~

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