Elections & Politics
Michigan underground newspapers fueled political activism before the Internet and social media
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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – The Vietnam War, the drive for civil rights and demands on college campuses for student power all fueled a 1960s media revolution in which Michigan played a major role. Student unrest and dissent were beginning to spread across America, not only in liberal-leaning Detroit but even at politically conservative Michigan State University, according to a new memoir by underground press activist Michael Kindman. For example, that movement sparked East Lansing’s first underground newspaper, The Paper, in 1965. The Paper was born because of a philosophical split within the State News—at the time MSU’s official rather than independent student daily–as Kindman tells it in his posthumously published book, My Odyssey through the Underground Press (MSU Press, $39.95). After Kindman failed to become editor-in-chief of the Michigan State News, he devoted most of his time to working on The Paper.