The Grapevine was established by the Arkansas Student Free Press Association in 1970 as an alternative to the University of Arkansas-sponsored student newspaper The Arkansas Traveler. Its first issue appeared on March 18, 1970. In April 1970 Paul Blume, a University of Arkansas junior and native of Nashville, Tennessee, was named The Grapevine's first editor. By September 1973 Joe Eblen had taken over as editor, and in August 1974 the paper was being published by the Grapevine Publishing Company, with J.H. Whitehead as president. By March 1976 Doug Howard and Brynda Pappas served as coeditors, with Pappas later emerging as senior editor. In October 1977 she was succeeded by Howard who, by April 1978, was joined by Peter Tooker as editor. Afterwards Tooker was the sole editor until August 1983, when he was senior editor and Barry Weaver served as editor. In August 1984 Charlie Alison became editor, being succeeded by Kim Martin by January 1985. Terry Kost emerged as editor and publisher by June 1985, and The Grapevine was sold to a brother-and-sister team, Nancy and John Maier, in 1986. In September 1986 they had arranged for John to be the publisher and Nancy to serve as editor, an arrangement that lasted until the final issue of The Grapevine was published on July 16, 1993.

In an editorial in the final issue Nancy Maier proclaimed that she and her brother had decided to take a “sabbatical” from publishing The Grapevine. She acknowledged the difficult nature of the work of publishing a small, alternative newspaper, and also noted resistance from city and county officials. However, she expressed her greatest disappointment in the “liberal-progressive community” of Fayetteville. In particular she charged that the members of the “liberal elite” pursued personal rather than collective agendas. She was especially disappointed that some “members of the liberal community” had used the newspaper as “a stepping stone and a whipping boy.” For these and other reasons, she declared that The Grapevine would cease publication until the progressive community genuinely came together to pursue a common agenda. However, this goal was not met and The Grapevine went out of business.