The First Underground Press

The Los Angeles Free Press was printed on cheap newsprint, laid out with scissors and paste, and sold on street corners for 10 cents. The first issue appeared on January 12, 1966, eight tabloid pages covering everything mainstream newspapers ignored: anti-war protests, police brutality, underground music, experimental art, sexual liberation, and drug culture. It was called the Freep, and it was the first successful underground newspaper in America.

Art Kunkin started it in his garage with $15 and a mimeograph machine. He was a labor organizer, a socialist, and a printer who believed the mainstream media wasn't telling the truth about what was happening in the streets. The Free Press covered the Watts riots from the perspective of the people who lived there. It published investigative pieces on LAPD corruption. It ran classified ads for roommates, concerts, and political meetings. It treated counterculture not as a curiosity but as the story.

The design was chaotic. Headlines clashed with body text. Photos were grainy. Columns ran into each other. But the chaos was part of the point. Underground papers rejected the sterile professionalism of the establishment press. They looked handmade because they were handmade. The aesthetic communicated authenticity, a refusal to be polished into something safe. Layout was politics.

The Free Press grew fast. By 1968, it was printing 95,000 copies a week, distributed across the country. Other underground papers followed: The Village Voice in New York, The Berkeley Barb, The East Village Other, The San Francisco Oracle. They formed a loose network, sharing articles, swapping printing techniques, building a media ecosystem outside the control of corporate publishers. They covered the civil rights movement, the anti-war movement, women's liberation, gay rights, environmental activism. Stories that wouldn't get published anywhere else found a home in the underground press.

an interior page of the helix underground newspaper, november 1967, showing the experimental layout and art typical of counterculture publications. source: wikimedia commons

The papers were financially precarious. They survived on subscription fees, street sales, and classified ads. Some took money from radical political groups. Some ran explicit personal ads to pay the bills. They were constantly on the edge of collapse, lawsuits, or police raids. Kunkin was arrested multiple times. The Free Press offices were firebombed. But the paper kept publishing.

The aesthetic influence was enormous. Underground papers pioneered the use of psychedelic graphics, full-page illustrations, hand-drawn comics, and experimental typography. Artists like Robert Crumb, Spain Rodriguez, and Gilbert Shelton created work that blurred the line between journalism and art. The design wasn't just decorative; it was editorial. Just as the typewriter had mechanized writing, underground papers democratized design, proving that anyone with access to a printing press could create media.

a page from the los angeles free press, november 1966 — the first year of the freep, art kunkin's pioneering underground paper. source: wikimedia commons

The movement peaked in the early 1970s and then collapsed. Some papers went bankrupt. Others were destroyed by internal conflicts, factionalism, or government surveillance. The Free Press itself was sold in 1973 and eventually shut down in 1978. But the underground press had already changed journalism. It proved there was an audience for radical perspectives, investigative reporting, and alternative voices. It showed that media didn't have to be corporate to be influential.

Today, the underground press feels like a precursor to the Internet. It was decentralized, participatory, and hostile to gatekeepers. It mixed reporting with opinion, news with art, information with advocacy. It wasn't objective, and it didn't pretend to be. It was a media system built by people who believed the existing system wasn't serving them. The Free Press and papers like it were proof that you don't need permission to tell the truth. You just need a printing press and something to say.