Underground Press 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.

[4] The first official UPS gathering was held at the home of the San Francisco Oracle's Michael Bowen in Stinson Beach, California, in March 1967, with some 30 people representing a half-dozen papers in attendance.

[citation needed] As Thorne Dreyer and Victoria Smith wrote for Liberation News Service (LNS), the formation of UPS was designed "to create the illusion of a giant coordinated network of freaky papers, poised for the kill".

But, they added, "this mythical value was to be extremely important: the shoes could be grown into," and the emergence of UPS helped to create a sense of national community and to make the papers feel less isolated in their efforts.

[a] By June 1967, a UPS conference in Iowa City hosted by Middle Earth drew 80 newspaper editors from the U.S. and Canada,[citation needed] including representatives of Liberation News Service.

LNS, founded by Marshall Bloom and Ray Mungo that summer, would play an equally important and complementary role in the growth and evolution of the underground press in the United States.

An attempt that summer by Bob Rudnick to coordinate and centralize the UPS at the offices of the East Village Other in New York City failed.

Cartoonists and strips syndicated by the organization included Robert Crumb,[11] Jay Lynch,[12] Ron Cobb, Frank Stack,[13] and The Mad Peck's Burn of the Week.

APS members sorely needed revenues, and in 1973, Richard Lasky, ex-Rolling Stone Magazine Advertising Director of the successful San Francisco-based weekly, and Sheldon (Shelly) Schorr of Concert Magazine, published in several cities,[citation needed] created a national advertising media selling company, APSmedia.

For example, Long Island's Moniebogue Press and Suffolk StreetPapers offered general audiences alternative perspectives on local news and culture, while Akwesasne Notes (published 1968–1992,[15] 1995–c.

Did we succeed in directing serious attention to cultural issues beyond the standard underground press focal points of rock music, drugs, sex, and new left politics?