L.A. Free Press

The ''Los Angeles Free Press'', also called the "''Freep''", is often cited as the first, and certainly was the largest, of the underground newspapers of the 1960s. The ''Freep'' was founded in 1964 by Art Kunkin, who served as its publisher until 1971 and continued on as its editor-in-chief through June 1973. The paper closed in 1978. It was unsuccessfully revived a number of times afterward.

Overview

From its inception, the ''LA Free Press'' was notable for its radical politics when, in the mid-1960s, such views rarely saw print. It wrote about and was often directly involved in the major historic issues and with the people who shaped the 1960s and 1970s, including the Chicago Seven, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Abbie Hoffman. Both the famous and the infamous would open up to the ''Los Angeles Free Press'', from Bob Dylan to the Black Panthers to Jim Morrison to Iceberg Slim. This was a new kind of journalism at that time.

The ''Free Press'' saw itself as an advocate of personal freedom as well as a vehicle to aid the anti-Vietnam war movement. Because of its coverage of the Vietnam War and how it became a touchstone for anti-war activists, the ''Los Angeles Free Press'' is given degrees of credit for the ending of the War. It grew with the movement, and at its peak was selling over 100,000 copies, with national distribution.

The ''Free Press'' was a founding member of the Underground Press Syndicate, a network of 600 community, student, and alternative newspapers throughout the United States. The paper also pioneered the emerging field of underground comics by publishing the “underground” political cartoons of Ron Cobb; and Gilbert Shelton's ''Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers'' started appearing as a regular feature in 1970.

One of the publication's greatest strengths was its music coverage. Among the writers whose bylines appeared were music editor John Carpenter, Jerry Hopkins, the trio of Pete Johnson, Richard Cromelin, and Don Snowden — all three of whom also wrote for the ''Los Angeles Times'' — John Mendelsohn, John Sinclair, Greg Shaw, Steven Rosen, Bill Wasserzieher, Anne Moore and Tom Nolan.

Publication history

Founding

Art Kunkin, at the time of the founding of the ''Los Angeles Free Press'', was a 36-year-old unemployed tool-and-die worker and former organizer for the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), where he had served as business manager of the SWP paper, ''The Militant''. The ''Free Press'' initially appeared as a one-shot eight-page tabloid, dated May 23, 1964, sold at the annual Los Angeles Renaissance Pleasure Faire and May Market, a fund-raising event for listener-sponsored KPFK radio. This first issue was entitled ''The Faire Free Press'', with the logo "''Los Angeles Free Press'' appearing on an inside page, and a coupon soliciting subscribers. Five thousand copies were printed, of which 1,200 sold at a price of 25 cents.

While the outside pages were a spoof of the Faire's Renaissance theme, featuring cute stories like one about a "ban the crossbow" demonstration, the inside contained legitimate underground community news and reviews. After the Faire ended, Kunkin circulated a brochure to potential investors and found enough backing to start putting out the paper on a regular weekly basis in July 1964.

Distribution

Because of free speech rules, newspaper publishers could buy vending machines, mount them on street corners chained to posts, and sell their issues directly to the public. Don Campbell, a ''Free Press'' editor, bought three vending machines for $125 and stocked them with papers. With the proceeds, he bought three more machines. Pat Woolley, later to operate Sawyer Press and the syndicate that handled Ron Cobb, took the papers around to her head shop clients and sold them by hand to drivers cruising the Sunset Strip.

People were willing to pay 25 cents for the ''Free Press'', even though readers could get mainstream dailies such as the ''Los Angeles Times'' for ten cents back then. The cry at the corner was ''"Don’t be a Creep, Buy a Freep!"''

Gaining a foothold

The ''Free Press'' was produced mostly by unpaid volunteers. In the beginning, many of them were the same people who volunteered at KPFK, where Kunkin had his own political commentary radio show. It operated for its first two years out of free office space in the basement of a Sunset Boulevard coffee house called The Fifth Estate, which was an informal headquarters for the teenyboppers who gathered and rioted on the Sunset Strip in the mid-1960s. Harlan Ellison and Lawrence Lipton were the first regular columnists, articles by the former collected in ''The Glass Teat''.

The paper grew slowly at first and in Oct. 1966, Kunkin informed a reporter for the ''Los Angeles Times'' that the paper had 9,000 readers and was operating on a shoestring. "I wanted to do a weekly in Los Angeles that would be like the ''Village Voice'' in New York," Kunkin told the ''Times''.

Author Charles Bukowski's ''Open City'' column "Notes of a Dirty Old Man" was taken on by the ''Los Angeles Free Press'' beginning in 1969, when the competing L.A. underground paper ''Open City'' folded.

Cartoonist Ron Cobb created an ecology symbol — a combination of the letters "E" and "O" taken from the words "Environment" and "Organism", respectively — and published it on November 7, 1969, in the ''Freep'', and then placed it in the public domain. ''Look'' magazine incorporated the symbol into a flag in their April 21, 1970, issue — it became known as the Ecology Flag.

By late 1969, the paper was seemingly at its zenith, with Kunkin controlling a small publishing empire, including three Free Press bookstores in Los Angeles, a typesetting plant, a printing company, and a book publishing firm. There were 150 employees and annual revenues of two million dollars.

1969–1970 upheavals

In spite of its apparent ascension, however, the business was awash in red ink. The ''Los Angeles Free Press'' had begun to rely more and more heavily on sex ads for its revenues, and fell into debt after Kunkin bought two expensive Mergenthaler printing presses.Houston, Paul. "The ''Free Press'' Mystery: Who Owns the Paper?", ''Los Angeles Times'' (July 16, 1971), p. 1.

In November 1969, ''Freep'' reporter Jerry Applebaum and a group of staffers, including Alex Apostolides, left ''en masse'' after disagreements with Kunkin to found their own paper, called '' Tuesday's Child.'' Shortly thereafter, after Kunkin failed to make an employee tax payment in 1970, the paper was seized by the Internal Revenue Service and temporarily shut down. At this point, much of the newspaper's remaining staff and then-editor Brian Kirby left the paper and began another competing newspaper, called the ''Los Angeles Staff''.

Devolution

The split in the staff began a downward spiral for the ''Free Press''. Kunkin borrowed $60,000, putting up the paper's name and logo as collateral.Kick, Russ, ed. ''Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide'' (Disinformation Co., 2005), p. 247. The note was cosigned by Marvin Miller, a major Los Angeles County sex industry publisher who both advertised in the paper and allowed Kunkin to use his presses after he lost his original printers. In 1971, Kunkin defaulted and the loan was foreclosed, and Miller became the new owner of the paper.

Kunkin stayed on as editor for about two years and then left, with several others taking on the roles of editor and publisher. (After he lost the ''Free Press'', Kunkin started another competing paper called ''The Weekly News'', with much the same tone as the old ''Freep'', which went out of business after only three or four issues.)

Miller, meanwhile, resold the ''Los Angeles Free Press'' to other parties in San Diego, California. Eventually, the paper became little more than a wraparound for sex ads. The publication survived until the late 1970s, when it was purchased by ''Hustler'' magazine publisher Larry Flynt, who found it unprofitable and soon shut it down. The last issue was dated April 3, 1978.About this newspaper: Los Angeles Free Press
Chronicling America, Library of Congress, retrieved March 25, 2010.

Attempted revivals

2005 revival

On 13 September 2005, the premier issue of a revived ''Los Angeles Free Press'' was published and distributed, again spearheaded by Art Kunkin, albeit with an entirely new staff. The revived publication's slogan was "We're Back. The True alternative to the corporate-controlled media." The print version was published in the original five-column format with the "screamer" headlines of old. It included both current and vintage content in both the articles and ads. The look of the paper was true to its original format.

The new version of the ''Freep'' was embodied with a constant online presenceNichols, Chris
"What Was L.A.’s First Alternative Newspaper? You can thank the hippies,"
''Los Angeles Magazine'' (January 23, 2018). and with separate sites for politics and music, as well as "pop-ups" of print editions — as when it was distributed without warning at nearly 100 locations within L.A. — as well as in New York, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta.

The new ''Free Press'' embodied many of the same independent ideals and beliefs of the original paper. It covered politics, health (including natural and/or holistic), spirituality, literature, media, food, and community issues. ''The Los Angeles Free Press'' was always intended to be a catalyst for social change. The paper took a stand against the Iraq War. The basis of the paper's beliefs was that names and locations may have changed but the issues concerning personal rights and the action of an unjust war were the same as during the Vietnam War era.

Later, the ''Free Press'' gave Tom Hayden a lifetime achievement award for his efforts as an activist, both in his private life and during his 18 years in politics.

Steven M. Finger became the publisher of ''The Los Angeles Free Press'' in late 2006/early 2007. Finger also owned and managed AP&G, the paper's marketing arm.

The revived ''Los Angeles Free Press'' went out of business in 2007, although Finger kept the website LosAngelesFreePress.com active, with archives of past editions available to view for historical reference and/or research.

Art Kunkin died in Joshua Tree, California on April 30, 2019, at the age of 91.

2020 revival

In 2020, Steven M. Finger and photographer Zach Lowry once again attempted to revive a print edition of the ''Los Angeles Free Press'';Moore, Stacy
"LA Free Press is reincarnated for a new revolution,"
''Hi-Desert Star'' (Aug. 11, 2020). by late 2022 that effort had also shut down.

In popular culture

The 1968 comedy film '' I Love You, Alice B. Toklas'' features Peter Sellers as a straight-laced lawyer who changes his ways and becomes a hippie, hawking copies of the ''Free Press ''.

The final issue of the ''Los Angeles Free Press'' is featured in Paul Schrader's 1979 film, ''Hardcore'', where George C. Scott's Jake Van Dorn character places an advertisement of himself as a porn producer in order to find his missing daughter.

See also

* ''LA Weekly''
* List of underground newspapers of the 1960s counterculture

References

External links

*

{{Authority control

1964 establishments in California
1978 disestablishments in California
Alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States
Counterculture of the 1960s
Newspapers published in Greater Los Angeles
Publications established in 1964
Underground culture
Underground press
Weekly newspapers published in California