Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I always thought those 'journal' or 'diary' sites were just a variation of
weblog, but I can see the need for the distinction. Doug Block's "Home
Page" as really more about that folks who do journals, esp. Justin Hall,
who's still doing it at http://www.links.net/. (Wondering if other
panelists saw "Home Page"?)

I posted only occasionally to my blog 'til I realized that I didn't have
to write all that much. I'd been feeding links to Mark & Cory for
boingboing.net, and it hit me... I could've blogged the link in less time
than it takes to send the email, especially using the zippy bookmarklet
tool that you can get from the blogger site.
  

    
Cory's post slipped in while I was typing (at a leisurely pace)...

I agree 'bout that. You could have the best of both worlds by publishing a
webzine and incorporating a blog.  The blog might offset one problem with
webzines, the pressure to get new material out on something like a regular
basis.
  

    
 I think that the difference between journals and blogs is important,
because the distinction between being outwardly focused and inwardly
focused is important.  I rarely read journal sites unless someone points
to a specific, interesting entry, but I read blog sites pretty 
voraciously.
  

    
Right ... journal sites seem to be a 'circle of friends' thing. I
occasionally look in on Justin's page, for instance, but I probably
wouldn't if we weren't friends.
  

    
Latecomer me: Heath. I've been traveling: Seattle. But now I'm here and
thrilled silly by who's here already... and what's been brought up already.
By way of introduction and cred dropping, here's my 411:

I got into zines in 1988 with an issue of MRR in the mid-80's (in terms of
issue number, natch). I was jazzed with the idea of making my own comics,
zines, and records, so I translated my interests in comic books, science
fiction, the media (ooh!), and music -- punk rock at the time after a brief
infatuation with bluegrass and, um, Kiss -- into a string of various zines
and zine-contribution stints that dated into the last few days.

No Drama, Blow, and Fifth Man were your basic MRR knockoffs: band
interviews, comics, reviews of other zines and records that I obtained via
the zine trading "network," and assorted personal writing. Fifth Man grew
into what was called Karma Lapel. I started KL-chan when Gunderloy's F5 went
under, concentrating on longish, in-depth analyses of DIY media artifacts.
KL grew from a one-page flier with Discordian clipart on the flip side to a
36-page tabloid newspaper with proper advertisers and distribution. I still
get emails wondering why my reviews aren't as long or as insightful as they
used to be. I have no answer.

When Seth and Jerod picked up the F5 reins (with Chris and notable others),
I kicked KL and started Media Diet, which ran one issue -- two if you count
the Lost Issue. Media Diet #1 was an 88-page pocket-sized zine that mixed
independent media analysis and commentary (read: reviews) with personal
writing. And that's what I eventually focused on when I revived KL-chan. I,
like many others in the early '90s, was enamored by perzines... a print
precursor to the blogs we see online today.

Today my zinemaking is limited to the occasional review. I was an early
contributor to Zine World, a spunky counterpart to F5. And I review
occasionally for zines and nonzines such as Top Shelf, a spirited comics
anthology put out by Brett, etc. at, well, Top Shelf, home of comic indies
such as James Kochalka (check out his recent edition of journaling comic
strips, the intersection of perzines, blogs, and photocopied comics).

Why am I here? I miss zines. I really do. They've changed, and not for the
better. Subsequent posts will address points raised above. Pinch me if I
disrupt too much.
  

    
Some out-of-the-gate and off-the-cuff replies...

Jerod's post about the lost history -- or largely unknown history -- of
zines is important. Many people credit zines to punk rock and the advent of
desktop publishing. It goes back much further than either, and some of the
zines (Hlavaty's Derogatory Reference, for example) that are still good
today are just so because of their ties to and cues from their forebearers.
When I was still in the thick of reviewing zines -- during the big megazine
boom of the mid-'90s -- I got tired of zines that were started because their
publishers had just seen their first zine. Granted, that's how I got my
start (MRR -- tangent: I did a staff newsletter for a Boy Scout camp that
was reviewed in F5 before Gunderloy quit. His take on Stafficidal Tendencies
still warms this heart.), but the best zines exist because their publisher
has something to say and can't help but say it regardless of media.

Mark's intro post was what got me thinking about the megazines. Remember the
boom of pubs such as Bunnyhop, Ben Is Dead, Genetic Disorder... and even
Might? Almost all west coast, these were zines that took as many cues from
traditional and mainstream magazines as they did zines. Some were merely
independent music magazines, but many folks did -- and do -- zines as ways
to do what they can in publishing until a better opportunity comes along.
Think Pagan Kennedy and her zine Pagan's Head, which lead to a collection...
and eventually more book contracts. The zine to book phenomenon fascinated
me -- the Baffler, Answer Me!, the various F5 and Chip Rowe books -- and I
remember being rankled by the thought that folks would do a zine as a
springboard. We see it happening less today, but how far are zines from
comic book ashcans?

Good to read Jeff again. I miss zines, and I miss OYB. Not sure why I don't
still pick it up regularly. When I first encountered OYB I was impressed by
its Lookout (Lawrence Livermore's old NoCal perzine) meets Attitude Problem
(a punkish tabloid that mixed skateboarding and skillful means -- punk
rockers and artisans as businesspeople: glassblowers, etc.) take on
sustainable living and transportation. Jeff's still active in alt.zines on
Usenet, and what I know of his current activities holds out that what he was
doing continues to be meaningful.

Kudos to folks' distinctions between Web journals and blogs. On Jim and
Cory's comments on linking, I view the practice as follows. The best zines
and even comic books connected their readers through letter columns and
reviews. Print links. Are you the kind of person who reads Cerebus? You can
see who else reads the book -- and what they're all about. Ditto for
reviews. Zines connected latent communities of interest before the Web did
so. And I think that outward links in blogs serve a function similar to
those of lettercols and reviews. You can gauge the company you keep by the
crowd they run with -- and what other media they're consuming and using. I
discussed this recently with the folks at Soft Skull Press
(http://www.softskull.com): Sometimes it's in your interest online to keep
traffic within your site. And sometimes it's useful in terms of community
building and (gack) marketing to surround yourselves with likeminded people,
sites, and services... and link them to each other.

I've said a couple of times that I miss zines. Why is this so? Well, I don't
read as many as I used to. And it's no longer for me to challenge zinemakers
to uphold quality in their writing, editing, and design -- as I did in Karma
Lapel, and as I did as a panelist at the first Underground Press Conference
in 1994. I don't have as much time to wade through the dreck to find the
gems. However, I think several other things happened: (a) the megazine, F5,
and zine book boom of the mid-'90s brought a lot of zinemakers into the fold
who weren't as inspired or energetic in their zinemaking (this is NOT the
fault of the megazines, F5, or zine books), (b) e-zines contributed to the
plug-and-play, "Hey, this is easy!" dynamic that increased productivity as
well as the noise to signal ratio... and made the quality harder to find (if
you PRINT your zine, you have to make more calls and work harder, IMO), and
(c) the Web in general. Zines used to hold the cards in terms of connecting
disparate communities of interest. Now the Web makes likeminded people that
much easier to find. And I think a lot of what made it into zines, APAs, and
other print networks such as mail art is now trafficked on the back channel
-- or online.

What zines do I still read? Giant Robot, THE megazine of the day, which
focuses on Asian-American lifestyles and pop culture. Cometbus, which
continues to be THE perzine that most model themselves after. The punk rock
trinity: MRR, Punk Planet, and Hit List. And many, many self-published and
photocopied comics. I find that I'm reading more magazines these days -- my
zine time is more focused and less exploratory. That said, because I just
canceled 80 magazine subscriptions to help cut costs at work, maybe I'll
have more time to dive back into zines. ^_^
  

    

To address Jim's questions about the synergies and differences between
the web and paper-based zines:  web publishing is just the next
evolutionary stage of DIY media.  

As in the previous explosions of zine publishing that occured at the
intersection of new technologies & too much free time, web media are
following the same pattern.  In that way it's no different than
previous technological advances (from home mimeographs to desktop
publishing).

The huge difference is that of cost.  The early days of electronic
publishing saw an inversion of the traditional model of zine economics
where paper based publications were relatively expensive to produce but
cheap to read.  Before 'net connected computers were in most offices,
schools and libraries an electronic publication could be considered
cheap to produce but expensive to read.  Now there is practically no
cost associated with either the production or consumption of a
web-based zine, unless one purchased a computer with the express
purpose of producing or consuming webzines.  Whereas paper, despite its
growing on trees, is tremendously expensive to use, even if one
factors in inflation.  Postage, too, is more expensive.  Companies have
wised up to the would-be Hunter Thompsons in temp workers' uniforms
and have implemented many obstacles to surreptitious corporate
sponsorships.  So only those most dedicated to the aesthetics of paper,
or most profoundly distrustful of computers in general or the 'net
specificially, still publish on paper.

The synergy is found when the diverse types of media can coexist under
one title and do what they do best - paper is easier to read in most
cases (the notable exception, when one is supposed to be slaving away
at the office); while your webzine offers nigh unlimited access to all
back issues and annotations, in the form links to other sites, to
current and past articles.  The paper edition of _MRR_ may be easier to
read on the toilet, but an online edition could allow a reader to hear
a sample of the musical work being reviewed.
  

    

Could whoever is in charge of the splash page at www.well.com change
the intro for this topic?  It states that zine publishing started in
the late 1980s.  That is embarrassingly incorrect by about 60 years.
  

    
From Tiffany:

hullo, everyone! sorry to drop in late. lots of nice & variant threads
seem to be weaving and unravelling here.

was my first 'zine experience reading MRR in chemistry class, or was it
making the first issue of my elementary school's "newspaper" (of which i
think i might've been the editor) in the purple-inked mimeograph machine?
was it working on the freebie newsprint tabloid EMERGENCY HORSE in eugene,
oregon, in like 1990?

i'm not really sure. but i didn't *really* get into it until the early
1990s, when a big messy swirl of reality hacking descended on my brain. i
found bOING bOING and Going Gaga and Mondo 2000, after having spent a few
years in a Robert Anton Wilsonian freakout, maaan.  i'd always liked the
punk rock, but it was the psychedelia that reeled me in.

the same influences led me to The Well and to the whole concept of online
life. i logged in, went crazy posting all kinds of shit, and bam! the next
day, i had email from all these writers who i thought of as being, like,
Big Famous publishers and stuff! people like Mark Frauenfelder and Paco
Xander Nathan -- and they wanted *me* to come into their private
conferences or write for their 'zines! RU Sirius was, like, responding to
my posts! soon Howard Rheingold was asking to publish my posts in Whole
Earth Review. i was doing silly photo shoots for Mondo. to me, this was
all much more huge than -- hell, i don't know, getting invited to the
White House or meeting Madonna, or whatever it is that impresses people.

it felt like i'd fiinally fallen into the right rabbit hole.

so for me: The Well and the Fringe Ware mailing list have everything to do
with why i <heart> zines and ended up making them. i'd already spent time
on local freebie papers, editing school newspapers, and stuff like that,
so it seemed natural to work on the Fringe Ware Review paper 'zine, the
TAZmedia and TAZmusique webzines, to make a paper digest 'zine called HOT
GEEKS! that included a Hot Geek Hunk O' the Month trading card. to helping
start up Anodyne's paper and later web 'zines in Portland. etc.

i could continue ranting for a long time. i'll shut up for now.  suffice
to say that i've been editing Signum at http://www.signumpress.com for a
couple years now, and i really luv it. we plan to publish a print
anthology (that's why we have such long features instead of doing the
usual shallow web-length thang), but still: i love, love, LOVE print. that
smell, that slidy sexy shiny paper. it's bad for trees, but i am a
magazine 'ho.
  

    
(I loved Emergency Horse!)
  

    
A lot of my first published writing was done for my friend Lori
Twersky's zine Bitch.  Bitch ended with Lori's death, but now there's
another zine called Bitch, and I believe they're currently putting
together a story on the original Bitch (which was subtitled "The
Women's Rock Newsletter with Bite").
  

    
Every blog fits somewhere on a continuum between an online journal on
one side, and a headline aggregator on the other. My favorites are the
ones that are one the headline aggregator side, with a couple of
sentences or paragraph of context. Jim Romenesko's blogs (obscurestore
and mediagossip) are like that. 

I used to think that a blog was no good if it was made by a gang of
people, since the quirky POV of a single blogger (like Jorn Barger of
robotwisdom.com) was the valuable filter. But metafilter.com is now one
of my favorites. How many different people post to that? They have a
very high batting average for me. I probably follow 25% of the links on
metafilter.
  

    
 I used to like Metafilter more than I do now.  There are too many 
users these days, I think.  And it's drawn its fair share of trolls.
  

    
I wrote a piece for my column on MSNBC's "The Site" site back in 1997
about the possible emerging trend of e-zines moving into print. Thought
some it is was relevant to this discussion. Jeff Potter was one of the
people "on the verge" that I interviewed. As you can see from his post
above, he went through with the move. Here's the article:

http://home.earthlink.net/~garethb2/basementZines.html

I bothered to update the links, but otherwise, it's in all of its
outdated glory.
  

    
Memepool is a good example of a collaborative weblog that usually has a
lot of great links (I click through a lot of them.  Assuming I haven't
already seen them elsewhere).  And it's been around for ages.

http://www.memepool.com/

(But I'm betting many of you already go there).

I've had a weblog since 1998 and it started out much more linky and has
become more journally.  I want to go back to linking and quoting more and
keep the journal stuff in a separate journal.  But it's tricky.  I get
feedback from folks who love the journal stuff and would rather most of my
writing be in one place.  

I like weblogs that are mostly links with quotes and commentary, but
occasional personal digressions.

(my weblog:  http://www.windowseat.org/weblog/ )
  

    
From Tiffany:

Biscuit -- d00d! you know of Emergency Horse? are you in Eugene? you
remember it? wow! i had very little to do with it. i was like a dumb
little kid who'd returned to her hometown after college to find that the
really cool older guys she looked up to wanted her to do stuff with their
cool 'zine. i think i just laid out ads, did some transcribing, that sort
of thing.

i'd been a huge fan of the Big Time Poetry Theatre as a high school kid in
the '80s, and of St Huck, and of the Lenny's scene, and the protests to
keep the hospital from shutting everything down, and the Dada parades, and
things like that. those same guys started Emergency Horse and the Cherry
Poppin' Daddies.

and *this* is what's truly nifty about zines: this winding, sideways
conversation. discovering the links between people. that element of
community that your local faceless institution, media conglom, greedy
startup, or global corporation is always trying to co-opt. fuck that.  
</predictable rant>

a question for Bloggers: if i took something that presents itself as a
list and called it a Blog, would it suddenly be cool? would it be a Blog
and other Bloggers would appreciate it and look around?

on Signum we have these Listies. the idea is simply for contributors to
share a list of stuff that's turning them on at the moment, whatever that
may be. some of it is linked, some not. descriptions are limited, if
present at all. (www.signumpress.com -- the listies are in the Detritus
section). would that be btetter as a "blog"? or is blogging defined by
using the actual blog software?

-tif
  

    
Blogging is a format, not a tool, though most people blog using tools.  I
myself write the HTML by hand, just because that's how I started mine and I
just haven't gotten around to changing over.  But anything formatted as a
blog is a blog, whether you use a tool or not.  That is: dated entries,
newest stuff at the top, links.

I think there are some fundamental things that make weblogs interesting and
rich; one is that flame wars and noise are limited, because you only read
the weblogs that turn you on.  Similarly, people who hate your weblog simply
don't read you --- they don't usually feel compelled to comment negatively
(this rule is somewhat bent if you have the fortune or misfortune of getting
publicity --- after Heather Anne Halpert had http://www.lemonyellow.com,
featured solo in an article in the New York Times, she got a lot of
attention and some people started to criticize her in public and in private
--- but still, that is still a relatively rare thing.)  And, of course, new
content is always at the top and is frequently updated, usually --- another
crucial architectural component.  Finally, the links --- not only the links
to content but the links to other weblogs:  we find blogs through "webs of
trust" --- we learn to trust the judgement of weblogs we follow and when
they link to other blogs, we add to our personal web.  Webs of trust are
self-organizing.  Another advantage to the links is that you tend to feel
positively inclined towards weblogs that link back to you; thus, weblogs
tend to fight less with each other.

What I really like about weblogs, though, is that, because of these webs of
trust, the content of weblogs is very diverse.  You can talk about what you
want to talk about, and people who are into you will read you, and people
who aren't will simply not be drawn into your web of trust.  You don't have
to worry about your conversation being derailed by the one person on USENET
who decides they want to engage in yet another iteration of some ancient
recycled flame war.  Trolling, similarly, is nearly impossible, etc.

Weblogs are sometimes criticized for being too derivative; always linking to
content and not providing enough new content of their own.  This is why I
personally prefer weblogs which combine original writing and ideas with
links to content; both adding to and helping to filter the vast content of
the Web.  I read my favorite blogs not only to find out what they've found
today, but to find out what they've been thinking themselves.  There is a
third category of weblog content, therefore: in addition to links and
personal journal entries, there's simply ideas, musings, creative writing,
and so forth.  So add another dimension or two to the spectrum.

On the journal/weblog dichotomy; Judith at http://www.calamondin.com places
her personal journal on the left, and the weblog entries on the right (check
out her site to see it --- it's more elegant than I'm describing).  I
myself, following the format of Heather Anne's Lemonyellow, simply mix
things all up within my entries; links inside journal entries, my own ideas
or musings, strange experiences, conversations with friends, event
announcements, or just links by themselves, or my own writing by itself.  I
like the formal possibilities of being able to do almost anything.
  

    
tif -- I lived in Oregon (Corvallis) in 1991-1992 and picked up Emergency
Horse there. I bet I still have copies in storage.  I was just getting
into design and writing at that point, and I remember both as being well
done in the Horse. 

Perhaps it was too professional to be considered a 'zine, but it had real
personality.  It definitely was partial inspiration for my later
involvement in local weekly and then national monthly magazines -- to add
to your point, that's one of the cool things about zines: their ability to
silently inspire people who come across them.
  

    
Sorry I've been MIA so far for this discussion. My website Street Tech
has suffered this bizarre spam scam/mail bomb (too convoluted to
detail here) and I've been on damage control for the last few days.
This sort of thing never happened in the zine world! Oh wait:
inter-zine warfare, scary hate mail, print shop censorship, obscenity
trials... Never mind.
  

    
Must be sunspots: blogger's also not working... there's a bunch of people
going ballistic in the troubleshooting forum at blogger.com.
  

    
 Nothing mentioned on Ev's blog, either.
  

    
blogger's down for repairs at the moment. 
  

    
Lots of new DDoS attacks out there -- Spamcop was DDoSed earlier this week.
  

    
On 44... I have a hate mail story to tell. When I was doing Blow back in the
late '80s, I reviewed a cassette by a band in Medford, Wisconsin, called
Vegtable Spit (misspelling theirs). The singer was atrocious, and -- in the
spirit of my reviewing style since then -- I said so.

This prompted a piece of hate mail from the band accusing us of "not
supporting the scene," being pretentious poseurs, and basically being wrong.
This continued off and on throughout the years -- and not from Vegtable
Spit, which has since reformed under another name -- and continues to
intrigue me.

If you're involved in self-publishing, zinemaking, blogging, or another form
of indie media, where does your responsibility fall as a reviewer, critic,
analyst, linker, or other referral to people's media products? Is it our
responsibility to support the DIY at all costs in order to provide
encouragement and permission to self-produce media? Or is our responsibility
to establish and encourage others to meet standards of quality in their DIY
work? A lot of what I've encountered in the zine world seems to hold that
standards and quality are not to be discussed -- and do little more than
shake the foundations of the "scene."

But there's so much crap out there. And our time is so short. When I
reviewed Web sites for Online Access back in 1996, I looked at about 300-400
Web sites a month in addition to my other writing and editing work. I kind
of wish that online journals and blogs had been as popular then as they are
now, but more than that, I view the ease of use of the Web -- and the
quality of most Web sites -- in a much different light than I did at the
outset.

I used to think that the Web -- writ large -- liberated thinkers and
creators. Now I view it similar to poetry. If you're a small-press poet,
maybe that means that you're a bad poet. I'm not saying that there's a
mutual inclusivity here: That all Web zines are bad. I'm just saying that I
wish there was more clarity to the "webs of trust" that Mitsu mentions.
Because I don't like all zines -- I trust some zine reviewers -- and the
best way to find new zines you might like is through trusted reviews.
  

    
e-mail from Jeff Potter:

Hi again...Man, there's a whole lot goin on out there. Neat to see all the
views and historic perspective going on here about zining.

I checked out one of the cool blogs the other day...and found this long
list of links. Sorry, folks! Not my cuppa tea. Maybe I'll try again
sometime and catch on better.

One of the things I did with my online OYB is make it total content. Total
destination. One small links page of places I go. Then 500+ articles of
pure rare nonfiction content organized by 6 main topics covering a couple
dozen areas of DIY culture, searchable---with nothing about indy labels,
bands or comics.

Every now and then some well-oiled web-gang finds something on my site and
I start getting a bunch of paper zine subs.

But really I do it all wrong. About once a year I upload a fresh batch of
200 articles or so. Are you laughing yet?

I manage my website as badly as my paper zine. I think that some folks have
links to me out there. But I wonder if I have even one on a blog? How to
find out?

Oh yeah, you're right about my pal's blog experience. I remember now, he
said it was the "OLJ" scene. And that they had conventions and such. Way
too much navel lint for him. This fits with what you guys are saying about
that way-personal side of the blog spectrum. But the all-links side seems
just as scary to me.

Me, what I've always done is just use Google to search up topics, then I
find the hardest-core CONTENT sites I can find. I've never run into a blog
doing this, that I know of. But then I'm out of this loop as much as I'm
out of all the others.

OK, Heath totally hit on the key to the Golden Age of zining. And it did
coincide with Gunderloy's F5. And it was fueled by zines like the one he
did that he mentioned. "Stafficide Tendencies." I never saw it, but...a Boy
Scout camp newsletter? Oh my god! That's the heart and soul of zining! And
THAT'S what we don't see anymore! Half the things in G's F5 didn't call
themselves zines. They were just weird newsletters put out by oddball geeks
and clubs. WEBSITES can't capture this stuff! It's the message in a bottle
vibe that is lost somehow.

I botch my own scene now coz folks don't get a message in a bottle from me
anymore. They get a club over the head! Who wants a 74page non-fiction
how-to article PERZINE about outdoor sports??? With book reviews of Samuel
Johnson and Simone Weil and the Civil War and Vietnam War tossed in? Ha!
Well, I've never minded being heavy handed. You want a message in a bottle?
I'll ram the Titanic into your house!  : )  How thoughtful.

Speaking of the heart of zining, we used to have a true Buddha guru, too:
Doug Biggert. (praise be...scrape, scrape....) At Tower. He busted the
world's doors open for zining it seemed. He was a big shot who ran a big
office his way, and that way included the little people. He was willing to
be hit by anything. He got zines onto big fancy newstands. The man. It was
great phoning him up. He could just ramble along, giving out great advice
from the inner sanctum and inside scoops by the bucketful. I felt like I
was talking to Kissinger or something. Maybe Andy Warhol. His whim ran
Tower. With perfect pitch. He would randomly send me pouches of crazy
zines. Remember the comic "Bitchy Bitch"? Fantagraphics, right? Zinesters
and comix people were just doing a dragster peel-out on the culture at that
very moment. We popped a wheelie down mainstreet, thanks to Doug and Mike.
And zines like "Stafficide Tendencies."

Jeff Potter
  ****
*Great Lakes Press * http://www.glpbooks.com
   (#1 publisher of engineering license reviews & discounts on techbooks)
*Out Your Backdoor * http://www.outyourbackdoor.com
   (friendly zine of modern folkways and cultural rescue...with bikes)