Note: I want to retain all rights to
this article. It is likely that I will want to put it on my website and/or submit
it for consideration in the next year or so to a book about zinebrarianship.
Credit/thanks will be given to Counterpoise
as appropriate.
ZINES ARE NOT BLOGS: A NOT
UNBIASED ANALYSIS
“[A friend of my neighbor] asked
what a zine was and I gave her a description that was worthy of Webster’s and
then started showing her various zines. … She looked at [my current masterpiece] briefly
and said ‘So a zine is like a photocopied blog.’”[1]
Matt Holdaway
“Well, in the simplest of terms
she's probably right, but in the simplest of terms I could say ‘A cat is like a
dog except cats meow, shit in a box and don't hump your leg.’ and be equally
correct.”[2]
Eric Lyden
The
first question I get asked when I explain zines to someone who is new to the
medium is, “You mean like a blog?” I suspect this is a common misperception if
the 13 entry thread on the topic (quoted above) from the Zinegeeks Yahoo Group is
any indication.[3]
As the reader might guess from the title of this article, my inclination is to
give a strongly worded negative response to this irritating question. However,
in the name of good librarianship, I will make an attempt to answer the question
fairly and honestly.
Definitions
of the word “zine” vary tremendously, but they do tend to have these common
characteristics:
- Self-published and
the publisher doesn’t answer to anyone
- Small,
self-distributed print run
- Motivated by
desire to express oneself rather than to make money
- Outside the
mainstream
- Low budget
For
the sake of this discussion, I will add:
- No need for any
special equipment or knowledge
- Portable
- An expression of
Do It Yourself (DIY) culture
- Foster a community
among their creators and readers
In
addition to some of the points above, blogs:
1. Allow the creator to
publish nearly immediately
2. Are dynamic and can be
altered or removed by the creator at any time
3. Can be interactive,
allowing comments from readers
Self-published
Blogs
seem to be self-published, but ultimately the blogger is responsible to someone
other than him, her, or herself.[4]
While blogs can be a very empowering medium, there aren’t many people out there
capable of fully hosting their own blogs. Therefore, there is usually an
Internet service provider that has the power to pull the plug on something it
deems offensive, be it because of politics, sex, religion, copyright, or
anything else. It’s also much more difficult for the average blogger to be
truly anonymous than it is for a zinester. Being able to violate copyright and
readers’ ethics or sensibilities have their good and bad points. Part of what
makes zines what they are and what makes them so great is the total freedom not
afforded to, but taken by the zinester.
Print run
A
zine cannot still be a zine and have a large print run. This is not true for
blogs. Some blogs have a million readers. Some of the most successful zines
circulate more than a thousand copies, but once they get beyond that point,
they cost too much to self-produce. This means that by many definitions they’re
not really zines anymore. After growing into 4 digit distribution, zines often
begin to rely on advertising and outside printers and distributors—all people
who then have an opinion about the zines’ content and the power to impact it, by
refusing to advertise in or print what they don’t like.
Motivation
The
desire to express rather than to profit as a motivation is something of a
commonality between zines and blogs. However, bloggers may have a narrower
scope on which topics they seek to express themselves. According to Chris
Dodge, Utne librarian and alternative
publications expert, “Blogs tend to be Internet focused, often, if not usually,
reacting to something published on the Web. Zines are rarely Internet focused
(if occasionally ZINE-focused). The two endeavors overlap, but the shared
subset is a smallish percentage of each milieu.”[5]
Outside the mainstream
An
unfortunate commonality is that both blogs and zines suffer from a similar lack
of heterogeneity, especially when it comes to the age of the creator. According
to the Perseus Blog Survey of hosted blogs, “92.4% of blogs [are] created by
people under the age of 30.”[6]
While zines are a minority majority effort, it is documented by more than one
angry compilation zine[7]
that the medium has been dominated by privileged white punks. I would even go
so far as to say that sometimes it feels like most zinesters are either punk
rock white bicycle kids living in Portland, Oregon or crafty home schooling
midwife mamas in their 30s. Even so, the voices and opinions of young people
and stay at home moms are underrepresented in corporate publishing. This is
their outlet.
Budget and special knowledge
Zines
and blogs are both low budget—if you
have access to an Internet computer. Clearly the publishers of the Zine
Yearbook, Jen Angel and Jason Kucsma, get the zines vs. blogs query a lot,
too, since they addressed the issue in the introduction to Volume 8 of the Yearbook.[8]
As they put it, “You don't need any specialized equipment to broadcast over the
airwaves or record your ideas, and you don't even need a computer to create or
view zines. All you need is a pen, paper, and a couple of dollars for the copy
machine. … Because there are no economic barriers to creating zines, they far
bridge the digital divide (the gap between those who have access -- and how
much access -- and those who do not) as a grassroots and decentralized form of
media. You're getting the voices of anyone with the gumption to put their words
on paper -- not simply those who have access to a computer.”[9]
Zines are not entirely free to create either, but historically, part of the art
of zining has been scamming as many of the materials and copies as possible.
Portability
I’m
sure there are people who read blogs by PDA on buses and in the bathtub, but
that’s just wrong.
DIY
The
majority of blogs are not DIY. Many of them are hosted, and furthermore the
level of artistic achievement doesn’t yet compare to that of zines, either.
Shinjoung Yeo explains, “…the medium (paper vs. web) has a great effect on the
outcome. A zinester can be far more creative with layout, design and materials
than a blogger can. A blogger is generally forced to create a linear structure
and overwhelmingly bloggers use the templates that are included or easily found
to use with their software (blogger.com, Movable type, word press...)”[10]
Community
Both
zines and blogs foster community, with LiveJournal[11]
type services especially developing zinelike ties between their members.
Neither zines nor blogs are known for their longevity, but zinesters do tend to
keep up with their zine friends even after they stop writing a particular zine
and move onto a new one or quit the genre altogether. I’m not sure that
blogging relationships are set up to work post-blog quite as well as their zine
counterparts. And how often does anyone reread a blog?
Immediacy
A
primary feature of blogging is its instant gratification. Something interesting
happens, the blogger remembers a dream, or she reads a funny post on another
blog, and within moments of having that experience, she can publish what
happened and her reaction to it for most any other Internet enabled person to
see—and link to. Although there is a genre of “24 hour zines,” for quick
turnaround, speed is not the norm in zine publishing. Notes Dodge, “I think the
key distinction is that a blog posting tends to be written and published on the
spur of the moment, as opposed to a zine's creation over time. Most zines tend
to be compiled, with material gathered, written, or drawn over weeks, months or
years, and actually edited, if only by the zine publisher herself. Thus they
are more like little self-published books than blogs.”[12]
Change
Zines,
although they’re called ephemera in library lingo, are actually a lot more
permanent than blogs. The zine reader gets to keep the thing forever. When the
reader returns to the zine, unless zhe has spilled coffee on it or wrought some
other type of damage, it will be the same. It may disappear due to the holder’s
negligence, but not because the zinester couldn’t maintain hir domain name or
website or could have, but got sick of doing so. A factor so significant in
defining the difference between zines and blogs that it’s shocking this issue
is so far down in this piece is that zines are finished products (even if
serials catalogers don’t think so). Blogs are not. No matter how sloppy a zine
is—and they really can be a mess—someone has taken responsibility for the thing
as a whole. Blogs are in danger of only being as strong as their most recent
post. The pressure is to add to it daily. Zinesters also put pressure on
themselves to produce more regularly, but ultimately it doesn’t matter much. I
am sad when my friend Celia[13]
doesn’t send out a new zine for a year, but that doesn’t make me any less
likely to read the new one when it finally comes. In fact, the delay adds to
the thrill. If the blogger doesn’t post for a couple of weeks, zhe may lose hir
readership altogether.
Change
Another
feature of the lack of permanence in the blogosphere is the fact that the
blogger can change a post anytime zhe likes. The first version’s feed may get saved in an aggregator, or the
site might be preserved in the
Wayback Machine[14].
If not, the reader has no way of knowing if the content was ever changed.[15]
The material is also vulnerable to hostile change in a way that zines are not.
Zines are not hacked. I suppose it’s possible, although very difficult, but who
would bother? Admittedly, though, this isn’t a problem for the 5% of Internet
users who read blogs via an aggregator (RSS).[16]
Interactive
There
is one difference between blogs and zines that I’ll freely admit may make blogs
more powerful than zines (in this aspect only) and that is that the potential
for interaction between creator/reader and reader/reader is much greater. Many
zines have letters to the editor. Some even have letters that respond to
previous letters, but this is not zines’ strength or purpose. Blogs provide an
excellent forum for collaboration and discussion. So then while zines are not
blogs, blogs are also not zines.
“Interestingly enough I have a
Hungover Gourmet zine and a Hungover Gourmet blog. And they couldn't be more
different.
“The zine features lengthy (at
least in comparison to most blogs), well thought out articles on a wide variety
of topics with keen illustrations.
“The blog is mostly food, drink
and travel-related news tidbits I find interesting, up-to-the-minute restaurant
reports, news about the zine and the like.
“Sad to think that somebody could
blow off a movement with centuries of history behind it with one sentence.”[17]
By
Jenna Freedman, Coordinator of Reference Services and Zine Librarian, Barnard
College
[1] Matt Holdaway. “So it's
like a photocopied blog” message on the Zinegeeks Yahoo Group discussion list.
Jul 18, 2005 7:47 pm. Available to subscribers at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zinegeeks/.
[2] Eric Lyden. “Re: So
it's like a photocopied blog” message on the Zinegeeks Yahoo Group discussion
list. Jul 19, 2005 11:27 am.
[4] In the spirit of the
multitude of zines I’ve read on the topic of gender and transgender issues,
I’ll continue using the gender neutral pronouns “zhe” for he or she and “hir”
for him or her.
[5] Chris Dodge in a
personal e-mail. “Re: zines are not blogs article”
Tue, September 27, 2005 11:10 am
[6] Perseus Development Corp., 2004 http://www.perseus.com/blogsurvey/thebloggingiceberg.html#demographics
[7] Evolution of a Race Riot, edited by Mimi Nguyen is one example.
[8] Jen Angel and Jason
Kucsma, "Introduction," in The Zine Yearbook,
Volume 8, ed. Jen Angel and Jason Kucsma (Toledo, OH: Become the Media, 2004),
5.
[9] Jen Angel and Jason
Kucsma, "Introduction," in The
Zine Yearbook, Volume 8, ed. Jen Angel and Jason Kucsma (Toledo, OH: Become
the Media, 2004), 5.
[10] Shinjoung Yeo in a
personal e-mail. “Re: new draft” Tue, September 27, 2005 11:27 pm
[11] http://www.livejournal.com “LiveJournal
is a simple-to-use (but extremely powerful and customizable) personal
publishing ("blogging") tool, built on open source software.”
[12] Chris Dodge in a
personal e-mail. “Re: zines are not blogs article”
Tue, September 27, 2005 11:10 am
[13] Celia C. Perez: I Dreamed I Was Assertive, Picaflor, and Skate Tough You Little Girls zines.
[14] This is a service
provided by the Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
[15] Same goes for “born
digital” government information. For more information, see http://www.freegovinfo.info/.
[16] Lee Rainie. “The State
of Blogging.” Pew Internet & American Life Project. January 2, 2005. Viewed
September 30, 2005: http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/144/report_display.asp
[17] Dan Taylor. “Re: So
it's like a photocopied blog” message on the Zinegeeks Yahoo Group discussion
list. Jul 19, 2005 12:41 pm.
http://academiccommons.columbia.edu/catalog/ac:138314
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