PUBLICATIONS ON DISPLAY AT THE CAMBRIDGE KIOSK

Remembering the radical press of the 1970s, from The Old Mole, to The Cambridge Phoenix and The Broadside

All photos courtesy of David Bieber Archives

The publications and memorabilia featured in the BINJ installation at the Cambridge KiOSK (June 2025) are sourced from the David Bieber Archives to reflect some of the most influential Cambridge publications from the past 60 years along with some that have been largely forgotten. Thanks to David and his whole team, including Chuck White and Joe Packard, and also to Pacey Foster and the Massachusetts Hip-Hop Archive for their time and passion. 

Items on display will rotate throughout the BINJ takeover, and we will continue to add descriptions and context to this page throughout the month and beyond. Subscribe to our newsletter here for updates related to the installation and the history of alternative publishing in Cambridge, and for video and transcriptions from events that we host at the kiosk.

The Old Mole (Cambridge, Mass.) 1968-1970

• Succeeding Titles: The Mole (Boston, Mass.) 1970 to 1971

The following is excerpted from a 2021 reflection by Dick Cluster published in Cambridge Day titled, “The Old Mole published out of Central Square, reporting what others in the 1960s would not.” The feature was a collaboration with the Cambridge Historical, which also assisted with our installation.

The Old Mole published 47 issues from September 1968 to September 1970, mostly out of a storefront and basement office at 2 Brookline St., Central Square. The first issue covered, among many other things, the demonstrations at the Democratic Party’s National Convention in Chicago; the last covered the Black Panther Party’s Revolutionary People’s Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. About half the coverage was local. The masthead (“staff of the Old Mole, an anti-profit institution”) listed 20 to 30 people who had worked on a given issue of the paper, none with ranks or titles. 

The paper drew its name from an obscure speech by Karl Marx. The version on our masthead said, “We recognize our old friend, our old mole, who knows so well how to work underground, suddenly to appear: the revolution.” That appealed to a sense that, while no new American revolution seemed anywhere near a point of triumph, one did seem necessary.

I don’t think there were ever more than four paid staff (at something like $140 a month). Most of the staff had other jobs; they also got free bundles of the paper to sell on the street. Most were college graduates, some from local schools, others who had gravitated to Boston from elsewhere. A few were high school or college students or dropouts or grad students. They were about half female and half male, and almost all were white.

Juche (Cambridge, Mass.) 1970 – 1970*

Juche was a short-lived radical paper published by the Cambridge-based People’s Information Collective & White Panther Tribe, both allies of the national Black Panther Party movement. The following is from a 2019 African American Intellectual History Society feature on the Black Panthers and Juche: 

The Black Panther Party, via the writings of Eldridge Cleaver, became exposed to the concept of Juche in 1969. Since their inception, the Panthers had promoted self-defense and autonomy for African-American communities. Nonetheless, the concept of Juche provided international legitimacy and a theoretical basis to the Black Panther Party’s anti-imperialist politics.

On the East Coast, white radicals and allies of the Panthers in Cambridge, Massachusetts formed a collective, known as ‘Juche’ which published a newspaper with the same name. Juche’s emphasis on self-sufficiency, autonomy, and national sovereignty appealed to American radical leftists during the Cold War era.

Regarding the apparent end of this publication, the following excerpt is from a Dec. 16, 1970 Harvard Crimson article, “Juche Hearing Is Today”: 

Seven members of the Juche collective will stand trial Friday, December 18, on charges stemming from a police raid on their home November 17. The group-the Cambridge People’s Information Center-publishes Juche, a radical newspaper for the Cambridge and Boston area.

Lawyers for the collective will attend a Third District Court hearing today to attempt to recover property which Cambridge police allegedly took during the raid. Charges against the group include “knowingly being in the presence of narcotics,” and “illegal possession of shotguns, firearms, and ammunitions without a firearms license or identification.” The seven will plead not guilty on all charges.

We love paying homage to those who came before us, but BINJ is still producing the news that mainstream outlets ignore, and in order to continue doing that we need your help. Please take a moment to support us here.

The Cambridge Phoenix (Cambridge, Mass.) 1969 – 1969

• Preceding Titles: Boston After Dark (founded 1966)
• Succeeding Titles: The Phoenix (Cambridge, Mass.) 1969 to 1972; The Boston Phoenix (Boston, Mass.) 1972 – 2013

The history of the Cambridge Phoenix and the many siblings and successors in its orbit is too labyrinthine for this space. However, we will be interviewing David Bieber of the David Bieber Archives about the legendary alternative weekly in an upcoming event at the kiosk. BINJ Editorial Director Chris Faraone, a former Boston Phoenix staff writer, will ask about a ragtag protest era media so rowdy that it inspired the 1977 star-studded newsroom flick “Between The Lines.” 

For the most detailed history available, we recommend this interview that underground culture chronicler and denizen Charles Giuliano did with media icon Arnie Reisman for Berkshire Fine Arts. If you want to dive even deeper, find a copy of “Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service” by Ray Mungo, along with “A Trumpet to Arms: Alternative Media in America” by David Armstrong (1999). You can also read more about the Phoenix and its unparalleled patriarch Stephen Mindich here and here.

The Broadside (Cambridge, Mass.) 1962 – 1969

• Succeeding Titles: Broadside & the Free Press (1969 – 1970)

The March 1969 issue of The Broadside & The Free Press on display in the glass case to the right with an up-and-coming Joni Mitchell on the cover is a strong representation of how prescient and culturally critical this publication was. Also on display at the kiosk is a blow-up of the first issue of The Broadside, which as you will see in the upper-left corner launched as a staple-bound short stack of mimeograph paper with an illustrated map of Cambridge.

The following notes on The Broadside are from D.S. Monahan at the Music Museum of New England (MMONE): 

As soon as the inaugural issue of The Broadside hit the streets on March 23, 1962, it reached required-reading status among folk-music performers, venue owners and fans in Boston/Cambridge and eventually all across New England. And that remained the case until its final issue in February 1969.

Expanding from the four mimeographed pages at first to as many as 16 pages on newsprint at its peak, the free bi-weekly was a treasure trove of information on the burgeoning scene and was the region’s go-to source as the folk revival rose to its mid-‘60s peak. The Broadside’s official circulation was around 5,000 copies, but its actual reach was much broader due to friends and folk-music aficionados sharing a single copy.

The Broadside was the brainchild of former MIT student turned Air-Force reservist David Wilson, who’d watched the folk scene explode in Boston and Cambridge in the mid-1950s, at first driven by the hootenannies held at the YMCA and local hotels, then by the growing number of live-music venues on the ubiquitous campuses of the area’s colleges and universities. With the number of New England-based folk performers, venues and fans expanding dramatically in the early ‘60s, Wilson saw the need for a reliable and creative publication that would appeal equally to artists, venue owners and music lovers.

The final issue of The Broadside was dated February 12-23, 1969, after which it merged with Free Press Boston and became Broadside & the Free Press. Distributed as an insert in newspapers across New England, that publication focused on social and political issues, not music, and its final issue was in September 1970.

Spare Change News (Cambridge, Mass.) 1992 – Present

The nation’s oldest street paper, Spare Change News was founded in 1992 by James Shearer, Tim Harris, and Tim Hobson and backed by the Homeless Empowerment Project. The outlet has historically primarily been “by the homeless, for the homeless,” and includes everything from news to arts coverage and poetry in a print edition that is sold on corners throughout Greater Boston. As Shearer once explained, they started the paper “to change perceptions and to educate the public by giving ourselves a voice and building a bridge between the haves and have nots.”

Read the city’s full release here.

Learn more about the BINJ installations in collaboration with the David Bieber Archives here and here. 

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