United States Student Press Association

United States Student Press Association
Company typeJournalism association
IndustryStudent publications
Foundedc. 1962
Defunctc. 1971
FateDefunct
Headquarters
Washington, D.C., US
Area served
United States
Key people
Roger Ebert (1963–1964)
Marshall Bloom (1967)
ParentNational Student Association
SubsidiariesCollegiate Press Service

The United States Student Press Association (USSPA) was a national organization of campus newspapers and editors active in the 1960s. A program of the National Student Association (NSA), the USSPA formed a national news agency for college publications called Collegiate Press Service (which eventually spun off on its own, lasting until the late 1990s).

Based in Washington, D.C., the USSPA held a national convention of college student newspaper staff each summer at a member college campus, and a national student editors conference in Washington each year during the academic year.

It was later revealed that the USSPA was underwritten by clandestine funding from the CIA and right-wing organizations like Reader's Digest.[1][2]

In 1967 journalist Marshall Bloom was designated as heir apparent to USSPA's executive director position, but his push to send student editors to Cuba and defy the U.S. travel ban led the incumbent executive director and other national staff to withdraw their endorsement and support. Bloom sought to win the position at USSPA's annual meeting in Minneapolis in August 1967 but lost a close vote of all student editor representatives to another candidate.

As a result of the vote, Bloom was purged from the USSPA.[3][4] Soon afterward, Bloom and his colleague Ray Mungo formed the alternative news agency Liberation News Service.[5][6]

USSPA later became independent, then suffered financial setbacks in the early 1970s, and disbanded.

  1. ^ Crewdson, John M. (December 27, 1977). "C.I.A. established many links to journalists in U.S. and abroad". The New York Times. p. 1. Retrieved January 20, 2009.
  2. ^ Berlet, Chip (2011). "Muckraking Gadflies Buzz Reality". In Wachsberger, Ken (ed.). Insider Histories of the Vietnam Era Underground Press. Voices from the Underground, Part 1. East Lansing, Michigan: Michigan State University Press. p. 282. ISBN 978-0870139833.
  3. ^ Leamer, Laurence (1972). The paper revolutionaries: the rise of the underground press. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-0-671-21143-1.
  4. ^ Glessing, Robert J. (1970). The underground press in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-20146-1.
  5. ^ McMillian, John (2011). Smoking Typewriters: the Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-531992-7.
  6. ^ Mungo, Raymond (2012). Famous long ago: my life and hard times with Liberation News Service. University of Massachusetts Press.