Underground Press Syndicate

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The Underground Press Syndicate, commonly known as UPS, and later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate or APS, was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in 1967 by the publishers of several early underground papers, including the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free Press, the San Francisco Oracle, and the Chicago Seed. In the South, the first to join was The Charlotte Inquisition.

UPS members agreed to allow all other members to freely reprint their contents. And anyone who agreed to those terms was allowed to join the syndicate. As a result, countercultural news stories, criticism and cartoons were widely disseminated, and a wealth of content was available to even the most modest start-up paper. As it evolved, the Underground Press Syndicate created an Underground Press Service, and later its own magazine.

Shortly after the formation of the UPS, the number of "underground" papers throughout North America expanded dramatically.

For many years the Underground Press Syndicate was run by Tom Forcade, who later founded High Times magazine. After a 1973 meeting of underground and alternative newspapers in Boulder, Colorado, the name was changed to the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS). APS was an attempt to reinvent the syndicate to compete with the growing network of alternative weeklies networked by the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies; but failed, and the AAN supplanted its role.