Underground Media

Underground media is synonymous with underground press and underground journalism. All these terms refer to the ideologically liberal journalism during the 1960s and 1970s that revolted against the journalistic norms of objectivity and appeared in the form of independently owned, published, and distributed print media. The first underground newspaper is considered to be the Los Angeles Free Press, founded in 1964. Some examples of underground media are the Berkeley Barb, San Francisco's Oracle, Chicago's Seed, the East Village Other, and New York's Rat Subterranean News. The Underground Press Syndicate was created in 1967 so underground newspapers could freely share information and news. Most college towns and large cities had an underground newspaper by 1969.

Underground journalists did not believe that a reporter could escape personal biases to report a factual news story. Underground stories did not feature divergent views and investigate opposing beliefs; rather, underground stories included the reporter's own passionate opinions. Although underground media were not mainstream news outlets and offended many different segments of America, the underground press can be credited with covering important stories that the traditional news media did not pick up for months or years. For example, the Kerner Commission faulted the 1967 Newark and Detroit riots to institutionalized white racism and the traditional media's negligence in failing to report on racism. Additionally, stories about Agent Orange made underground media headlines long before mass media picked up the stories.

Underground media was not a long-lived experiment in journalism. Most underground newspapers had disappeared by the mid-1970s. However, the investigative drive that the underground media possessed drifted into the mainstream as the underground newspapers faded away. Popular underground media beats that the traditional media eventually incorporated into its regular coverage included environmental pollution, music, civil and women's rights, and drugs.

There are still magazines and online news outlets that can be described as being in the spirit of underground media. Utne Reader is just one of many alternative magazines that focus on stories that the mainstream press does not cover. http://CommonDreams.org, http://AlterNet.org, and http://IndyMedia.org are some of the online news resources for people interested in alternative news. Even on the political right, ideological conservatives have their own news magazines and online news outlets that cater to the news stories conservatives think are not getting covered by the mainstream media. The underground media had an impact on both mainstream news organizations and also today's alternative press.