YESTERDAY, we discussed a would-be commercial “alternative” magazine that wasn’t quite fiscally making it, and how it would probably have to find a business plan that didn’t require big corporate advertisers.
There’s a class of what might be called “ground level” zines (slicker than underground fanzines but rougher than corporate mags) that basically run on the business plan of expecting to lose money, and coming out as often as, or as long as, their publishers can subsidize them.
One of the more durable of these was Ben Is Dead. In tiny type on cheap newsprint, it relished in adoration or at least obsession with many of the relics of late-modern life–Sassy, Beverly Hills 90210, childhood memories, Marvel Comics, underwear, etc. etc.
But after some 30 issues in 11 years, publisher Darby Romeo has finally quit. Like the makers of Factsheet Five, Fizz, and several other ground-levels that have gone away in recent years, she’s decided to move on in her life.
A piece at Feed claims the end of Ben Is Dead forebodes the end of the whole Zine Revolution, an explosion of self-expressions that got underway in the early ’80s with cheap photocopying and desktop publishing.
Nowadays, the Feed essay notes, it’s easier (and just as materially unrewarding) to put up a personal website.
From my own 5.5-year experience in newsletter self-publishing, I could certainly see how the excitement of accumulating piles of print can begin to wear off. But I also see personal publishing as, well, a personal endeavor, one it’s perfectly OK to leave when you want to do something else.
Ben Is Dead is not a “failure” for not being continued, and Romeo’s certainly not “giving up.”
A personal zine is also a product of its times. Back in the ’80s and early ’90s, the rough-hewn look of many ground-level zines was an appropriate visualization of a DIY aesthetic opposed to old bureaucratic communications media. But in today’s go-go-go-getter cyber-economy, everybody’s supposed to be a young entrepreneur, and homemade-looking media can sometimes be perceived as simply the work of young entrepreneurs who aren’t doing it right.
I’ve seen newer ground-level zines, such as ROCKRGRL, Bust, and The Imp, which put their messages into more elaborate, more “professional” looking (but still un-corporate) designs. Will these go on to enjoy long lives? Maybe, or maybe their makers will move on to still-newer concepts.
Zines are no more dead than print media in general.
And, no, print media in general isn’t dead either.
IN OTHER NEWS: Seattle’s news media finally found something more important than Ken Griffey Jr. leaving town–specifically, a chance to spend seven hours of commercial-free live TV ruthlessly exploiting a minor tragedy; complete with lingering helicopter shots of police dogs wandering around clueless and scentless.
IN STILL OTHER NEWS: Who had the first commercial on South Park’s virulent anti-Pokemon episode? That’s right–Magic: The Gathering, from the now-Hasbro-owned outfit that also makes the Pokemon card game.
TOMORROW: Ron Harris’s journey from phony workout videos to phony human-egg auctions.
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