Liberation News Service
Encyclopedia
Liberation News Service was a New Left
, Underground press
news service which published news bulletins from 1967 to 1981.
and Marshall Bloom
after the two of them were separated from the United States Student Press Association
.
A split in the news collective, then based in New York City (recently relocated from Washington, D.C.), saw Bloom set up a short-lived competing operation in Montague, Massachusetts
.
LNS garnered support from well-known journalists and activists, as documented in a letter signed by I.F. Stone, Jack Newfield
, Nat Hentoff
, and William M. Kunstler published in the New York Review of Books. In an appeal for funds, the signers praised the investigative work of LNS, and noted it had "grown from a mimeoed sheet distributed to ten newspapers to a printed 20-page packet of articles and graphics mailed to nearly 800 subscribers twice a week
Starting in 1968, for several years, LNS was produced from Morningside Heights in Manhattan, initially from a store front, and later from the basement of an apartment building which at one time had been a food store (but sat empty for twenty years). This location provided LNS with a front row seat for the 1968 uprising at Columbia University
, for which it provided extensive coverage, including inside the various occupied buildings, at a time when the mainstream media were only printing official statements (or in the case of the New York Post
, editorials demanding blood). Coverage of the "big bust" at Columbia, in which over 700 were arrested, was one of the two most widely reprinted of all LNS stories, the other being a piece entitled "Americans Are Unfit for Human Consumption".
Reduced to serving only 150 newspapers, the LNS collective decided to close operations in August 1981. LNS records are archived variously in the Contemporary Culture Collection of Temple University
Libraries, the Archive of Social Change of the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Library; its photographs are archived at New York University
's Tamiment Library
.
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
, Underground press
Underground press
The underground press were the independently published and distributed underground papers associated with the counterculture of the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, and other western nations....
news service which published news bulletins from 1967 to 1981.
History
The Liberation News Service was co-founded in the summer of 1967 by Ray MungoRay Mungo
Raymond Mungo is the author, co-author, or editor of more than a dozen books. He writes about business, economics, and financial matters as well as cultural issues...
and Marshall Bloom
Marshall Bloom
Marshall Bloom is best known as the co-founder of the Liberation News Service with Ray Mungo in 1967.-Early life and university studies:...
after the two of them were separated from the United States Student Press Association
United States Student Press Association
The United States Student Press Association was a national organization of campus newspapers and editors active in the 1960s. It formed a national news agency called College Press Service . USSPA was developed as a program of the National Student Association . USSPA later became independent, then...
.
A split in the news collective, then based in New York City (recently relocated from Washington, D.C.), saw Bloom set up a short-lived competing operation in Montague, Massachusetts
Montague, Massachusetts
Montague is a town in Franklin County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 8,489 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Springfield, Massachusetts metropolitan statistical area....
.
LNS garnered support from well-known journalists and activists, as documented in a letter signed by I.F. Stone, Jack Newfield
Jack Newfield
Jack Newfield was a muckraking journalist, employed by The Village Voice, the Daily News and the New York Post. He covered the emergence of the New Left and the civil rights movement, and was a close friend of Robert F...
, Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff
Nathan Irving "Nat" Hentoff is an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media and writes regularly on jazz and country music for The Wall Street Journal....
, and William M. Kunstler published in the New York Review of Books. In an appeal for funds, the signers praised the investigative work of LNS, and noted it had "grown from a mimeoed sheet distributed to ten newspapers to a printed 20-page packet of articles and graphics mailed to nearly 800 subscribers twice a week
Starting in 1968, for several years, LNS was produced from Morningside Heights in Manhattan, initially from a store front, and later from the basement of an apartment building which at one time had been a food store (but sat empty for twenty years). This location provided LNS with a front row seat for the 1968 uprising at Columbia University
Columbia University protests of 1968
The Columbia University protests of 1968 were among the many student demonstrations that occurred around the world in that year. The Columbia protests erupted over the spring of that year after students discovered links between the university and the institutional apparatus supporting the United...
, for which it provided extensive coverage, including inside the various occupied buildings, at a time when the mainstream media were only printing official statements (or in the case of the New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
, editorials demanding blood). Coverage of the "big bust" at Columbia, in which over 700 were arrested, was one of the two most widely reprinted of all LNS stories, the other being a piece entitled "Americans Are Unfit for Human Consumption".
Reduced to serving only 150 newspapers, the LNS collective decided to close operations in August 1981. LNS records are archived variously in the Contemporary Culture Collection of Temple University
Temple University
Temple University is a comprehensive public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Originally founded in 1884 by Dr. Russell Conwell, Temple University is among the nation's largest providers of professional education and prepares the largest body of professional...
Libraries, the Archive of Social Change of the University of Massachusetts Amherst
University of Massachusetts Amherst
The University of Massachusetts Amherst is a public research and land-grant university in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States and the flagship of the University of Massachusetts system...
Library; its photographs are archived at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
's Tamiment Library
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Archives
The Tamiment Library is a research library at New York University that documents radical and left history, with strengths in the histories of communism, socialism, anarchism, the New Left, the Civil Rights Movement, and utopian experiments. The Robert F. Wagner Archives, which is also housed in...
.
Further reading
- Armstrong, David. A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America (Boston: South End PressSouth End PressSouth End Press is a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, John Schall, Pat Walker, Juliet Schor, Mary Lea, Joe Bowring, and Dave Millikan, among others, in Boston's South End...
, 1981), pp. 105–107. ISBN 0-89608-193-1 - Diamond, Stephen. What the Trees Said: Life on a New Age Farm (New York: Dell Publishing Co., Inc. 1971) Documents the time LNS was moved to a farm in Massachusetts.
- Dreyer, Thorne and Victoria Smith (1969), "The Movement and the New Media," Liberation News Service".
- Mungo, Ray. Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard times with Liberation News Service (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970).
- Wachsberger, Ken, ed. Voices from the Underground: Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press (Incredible Librarian Books, 1993) ISBN 1879461013 Azenphony Press
External links
- LNS packet #197 (Sept. 25, 1969) at the Liberation News Service archive
- LNS photograph collection at Tamiment Library
- LNS records, 1969–1981, at the Contemporary Culture Collection of Temple University Libraries.
- Liberation News Service (Famous Long Ago Archives) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Library Archive of Social Change
- Liberation News Service
- Liberation News Service archive