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Cover of Northwest Passage vol. 1, no.2 (April 10, 1969) issue. Photo showing members of the local "freak" community, including Northwest Passage staffers. Frank Kathman is the tall, mustachioed man in the upper right.
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| Type | Biweekly newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid/Alternative newspaper |
| Founder(s) | Frank Kathman, Laurence Kee, Michael Carlson |
| Publisher | Frank Kathman |
| Editor-in-chief | Laurence Kee |
| Art Director | Michael Carlson |
| Founded | March 17, 1969; 55 years ago (1969-03-17)inBellingham, Washington |
| Ceased publication | June 1986; 38 years ago (1986-06) |
| Headquarters | Bellingham, Washington (1969–1977) Seattle, Washington (1977–1986) |
| Circulation | 6,000 (1972) |
The Northwest Passage was a bi-weekly underground newspaperinBellingham, Washington, which was published from March 17, 1969 to June 1986. The paper was co-founded by Frank Kathman as publisher, Laurence Kee as Managing Editor, and Michael Carlson (now Harman) as Art Director.[1] The newspaper was primarily known for its graphic design content.[citation needed]
Frank Kathman had originally been influenced by a college class that he took with Bernard Weiner at Western Washington State College (now University), where the underground press was studied. Later, Kathman and Carlson wrote and designed a recruitment poster that was printed, calling for the founding of the paper. They recruited Kee, who was a reporter for the Bellingham Herald, and the only one of the three with a steady paycheck, so it came down to him to write a check to the Lynden Tribune on March 17, 1969, in order to get the first issue printed. Kee was later fired from the conservative Herald for his involvement with the Passage.[citation needed]
The paper was sustained from that point on by personal donations from the community; by sales in a few news boxes and through personal hawking campaigns in Bellingham and Seattle; through subscriptions sold to individuals and university and community libraries all over the country; and through the sale of display advertising — most notably through a deal with Warner Bros. Records. The Tribune later refused to print the Passage, bending to conservative political pressures in the county, and the Passage was moved to the Skagit Valley Herald for further printing. Published in tabloid newspaper format and selling for 25 cents, it was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service, and reported circulation of 6000 copies in 1972. Volunteers set type and did layout.
The Northwest Passage was originally housed in Kee's home on Maplewood Ave, where the bedrooms were converted to graphics layout rooms. Later, when Kee and the paper were evicted from the rented house, the Passage moved to a house in the outlying area, on Yew Street Rd. The next home of the paper was in a taxidermy building on W. Holly St., near the downtown area. Later, the paper moved to offices in the Morgan Block Building in the Fairhaven District of Bellingham, known as "Happy Valley", or the "Southside". "Happy Valley" had been a common name for the area since before the founding of Fairhaven. The Block building, located at 1000 Harris Avenue was owned by the People's Land Trust.[2] It also housed Good Earth Pottery, Fairhaven Music, and the Community Food Co-op, and was a hive of the counterculture from 1969 through the end of the Vietnam War. At the time, Fairhaven was a hippie enclave—a temporary autonomous zone of cooperative enterprise that spawned the community garden program, a cooperative primary school, and a co-op flour mill (it has since become a family-owned business and moved out of Bellingham), all of which are still thriving forty years later.[3][when?][citation needed][4]
Though initially a kind of hippie paper focusing on the counterculture and ending the Vietnam War, under the leadership of Kathman and Kee, and later Chris Condon and others, it quickly became an important source of investigative journalism on political and environmental issues in Bellingham and the Pacific Northwest in general.
During the People's Park riots in Berkeley, California during the summer of 1969, the Passage was chosen as the pool print representative for the national media, and was allowed inside the Park to be "embedded" with the armed National Guard unit that was holding the Park against the siege conducted by thousands of demonstrators who were trying to get the park restored to its former use as a public area. The resulting article by Kee was representative of other reporting by the Passage which was often quoted by other publications and even reprinted by some on occasion.[citation needed] Although the editorial and reporting reach of the Passage extended out into the nation and the world, the paper nevertheless retained its local community feeling in Bellingham throughout its existence.[citation needed]
Original editor Laurence Kee left the paper to found the Seattle rock band Child, and in Los Angeles played with the Eric Burdon Band and others, before coming back to Bellingham to teach at Western Washington University's Fairhaven College in their "Artist-In-Residence" program.[citation needed]
From 1969 to 1977 Northwest Passage was based in Bellingham, relocating in 1977 to Seattle.[5] In Seattle it was produced at 1017 E. Pike Street. After 1981 it was published monthly.[6]
Five articles from Northwest Passage were selected for the book Alternative Papers: Selections from the Alternative Press, 1979 - 1980.[7]
A 1990 Northwest Passage Reunion brought out reflections by Bernard Weiner.
