I just finished skimming through (reading maybe half of the reviews) a zine called "Best Zine Ever!" It's a review zine that has short descriptions of a great many recent issues of zines.
One big thing popped out at me as I looked at it: most zines these days, or at least the ones this review zine tends to like, are "perzines," in other words, personal zines, which are pretty much autobiographical affairs that concentrate on daily life and "finding oneself," travelogues, etc. There's nothing wrong with this, and in fact I enjoy a lot of perzines. However, where are all the other zines? I remember when there were zines about everything. Cooking, politics, music (of course), science fiction, art, various subcultures, various lifestyles. Now, instead of doing more journalistic or survey type DIY publications, zinesters seem to be concentrating on very self-focussed writing and cartooning.
If this is the case for the zine world at large and not just the preference of collective of reviewers who write for "Best Zine Ever!", then why is this? I have 2 theories: 1) people interested in other topics have moved their efforts largely to the web. 2) the decrease in publication costs have led to people interested in other topics to go into producing publications with higher production values, which start to be considered more "magazines" and not "zines" anymore (although I would contend that the measure of "zineness" is more about funding sources and intent, rather than just production values).
Either way, it's an interesting social phenomenon. People who have more exterior concerns have moved on, for one reason or another, and that's a bit sad, in a way. Others who still make zines are more concerned with the interior life, in self-expression, and are, perhaps rightly, not interested in or are cautious about having their navel-gazing reach a truly large audience, which the web and better print quality would potentially provide.
Posted by steev at Septiembre 14, 2007 11:15 AM