Sixties-era "underground" newspapers live on in new media websites and blogs
http://debimartin.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/sixties-era-underground-newspapers-live-on-in-new-media-websites-and-blogs/
by Debi Marti
July 26, 2011
Research Question: What does the rise and fall and assimilation into
mainstream press of alternative newspapers of in the 1960s tell us
about the likely trajectory and diffusive capacity and ultimate
legitimate cultural impact of the blogs and websites which have
proliferated this decade?
Think: Rolling Stone magazine, regarded as relatively mainstream
these days, it started as an alternative publication during the
Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967. It adapted its editorial
mission and business model to survive and thrive.
Method: An Extended Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography to
address the research question and lay the groundwork for further
study in a larger work that will include a content analysis of and
focus on the legacy and lessons learned from the operation of
Sixties-era Houston "underground" newspaper Space City News!
My proposal will consist of a substantial extended literature and
annotated bibliography that considers sources that compare and
connect the cultural shifts, philosophical underpinnings and
technical innovations that led to an explosion of alternative
newspapers in the Sixties era and paved the way for online forums and
blogs, which grew exponentially around and after the turn of the last
century. The review will focus on identifying and appraising the most
valid sources that locate the nexus where the egalitarian ethos the
DIY mentality and postmodernist sentiment against absolute meanings
of both eras intersect. Moreover, it will aim to address why after so
many years of relative neglect, "underground" newspapers have this
year become the subject of books by academics, have recently
resurrected as online blogs, and whether participants in the new
media blogosphere can learn anything about survival from the tale of
the rise and fall of the alternative Sixties era press and perhaps,
its rebirth. Wherever possible, it will inform further research
approaches on how to frame the contributions if any of Houston's
Space City News!
Interdisciplinary journal articles, book reviews, books, websites and
other such works by scholars in the fields of journalism and American
history as well as similar works published in the popular press in
print or online will be considered including:
Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of
Alternative Media in America, published by Oxford University Press,
January 2011 and written by John McMillian, an assistant professor of
history at Georgia State University in Atlanta. McMillian has a Ph.D.
in American history from Columbia University, and his dissertation
was honored by the American Journalism Historians Association.
From 2001-2009, he taught at Harvard University, in the Committee on
Degrees in History and Literature, and in the Undergraduate Writing
Program. He is a founding editor of The Sixties: A Journal of
History, Politics and Culture
Reviews of Smoking Typewriters in popular press and online media and
academic journals
Academic journal articles: "The New Age of Alternative Media." (Cover
Story) Columbia Journalism Review; Sep/Oct 2003, Vol. 42 Issue 3,
p20-20, and "Alternative Newspapers and Mobilizing
Information." Journalism Quarterly; Summer/Autumn87, Vol. 64 Issue
2, p604-607, 4p
Also published 2011: Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground
Press Part 1. Edited by Ken Washsberger and published by Michigan
State University Press, which includes "Space City! From Opposition
to Organizational Collapse" by Victoria Smith Holden and includes a
discussion on alternative press and today's bloggers. Plus reviews of
that book
For historic context: Uncovering the Sixties: The Life and Times of
the Underground Press by Abe Peck, Medill J faculty and former
Rolling Stone contributing editor (published 1985 by Citadel Press);
Howard Rheingold on the WELL community and counterculture in The
Virtual Community ; Takin' it to the streets: A Sixties Reader (1995
Oxford University Press); Rolling Stone Magazine: The Uncensored
History by Robert Draper (1990 Doubleday); Liberating the Media: The
New Journalism by Charles C. Flippen (1974)
Rebirth of Sixties era Austin underground newspaper: ragblog.com and
The Rag. Search archives for relevant material. Online since 2005.
Founder Thorne Dreyer founded Houston's Space City!
Online archives of Cite magazine, published by Rice Design Alliance,
including report of panel discussion at Museum of Printing History's
"Underground Papers in H-Town" exhibit:
http://offcite.org/2010/05/21/underground-papers-in-h-town
Houston Public Library online digital archives featuring interview
with Thorne Dreyer:
http://digital.houstonlibrary.org/oral-history/thorne-dreyer.php
Ultimately, this research will inform an ongoing project on Houston's
Montrose Counterculture that I initially began as part of my master's
report for a degree in American Studies from UT Austin in 1999, and
which has remained on "my radar" ever since. Thanks to advances in
archiving and digitizing documents that date back to the 1960s and
1970s, research problems regarding accessibility issues involved in
doing this project have been resolved. Moreover, in recent years,
after hardly any such instances, all sorts of projects related to my
research interest have popped up online and elsewhere: a short
broadcast on PBS on Montrose, a film on the Montrose area music hall,
Anderson Fair, the longest continually running such space in Texas,
rivaling even the Armadillo World Headquarters and The Rag: A Film
(scroll down on right side of blog for link), the legendary Austin
underground newspaper founded by some of the same folks who founded
Houston's Space City!
When I was growing up in Houston, the place to find anything hip and
cool and cutting edge if you could not leave town and move to
Austin was "The Montrose," an area inside the "Loop," on the edge
of downtown. You'd find a 24-hour walk-in drug crisis center, Townes
Van Zandt playing at Anderson Fair, A Moveable Feast health food
store and food co-op, The Grass Hut head shop and the "heads" at Good
Karma auto garage would give you a fair deal when they worked on your
car. The area had a counterculture alternative to just about
everything one might need including "underground" media on radio
and in print.
Houston was an unlikely counterculture post because the city was
known for its oil industry, kickers a la Urban Cowboy, mosquitoes and
dreadful humidity, not soil fertile for the roots of a progressive
culture. But it is where the Ku Klux Klan blew up the city's Pacifica
radio station's tower in May of 1970, just a few days after the
National Guard killed student protesters at Kent State. It was also
the site of the Moody Park Four clash with police in 1977.
This proposal will inform a larger work that will argue for a greater
appreciation of the Montrose Counterculture of Houston and the
sequence of related events dating back to the 1970s that may very
well have led to the 2009 election of the city's first lesbian mayor,
long-time Montrose resident, Annise Parker. Back in 1970, when
communal living and co-ops abounded in The Montrose, one of the first
such residences was The Westmoreland World Cartel, founded by
"radicalized" Rice University architecture and media students. One of
the residents was Travis Morales of the Moody Park 4, who lived there
when he was a pre-med student at Rice. Today, it's Mayor Parker's home.
.
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