ARCHIVE FILES (see complete listing below)
May 11, 2008
WEBZINES vs. PRINT MEDIA
To my dismay, many of my favorite magazines are going belly-up or undergoing drastic transformations. Most of them are rock/pop music magazines, but music is a primary interest and passion of mine. It all started about one year or so ago when ICE, a color, slick newsletter, ceased publication. ICE was primarily a week-by-week popular music release calendar and was the most accurate and up-to-date one in the industry. But as the newsletter grew into a slick magazine, ICE increased its coverage to include articles and columns, including ones on digital and gray-area (the polite term for bootlegs) releases and was for me an essential magazine to look forward to receiving every month. However, on-line sites such as PAUSE & PLAY provided the same information (that is, the week-by-week release calendar) for free. But ICE featured wonderful articles and information, and its loss was heavily felt here. No other source has yet been able to replicate what ICE did so well.
More recently, two of my favorite music magazines folded and/or transformed themselves. First of all, the slick alternative music HARP folded just four months after I finally decided to subscribe. As the staff revealed, with the imminent death of the CD and the reshuffling of music labels (one buying out the others), advertising revenue was way down so the magazine was simply discontinued. While their informative website is still up, it is no longer updated and seems a click away from oblivion. Subscribers have been notified that the magazine is trying to get another music magazine to honor remaining subscriptions. But I am not worried, I am simply sad.
Perhaps the magazine whose demise matters most to me is NO DEPRESSION, a magazine remaining to the alternative music genre what MIDNIGHT MARQUEE remains to the classic horror movie genre. The two minds behind the magazine, the leading Alternative Country magazine that most recently transformed into what is now called Americana, just could not raise the advertising revenue dollars, since the music industry has been in a state of depression for the last few years. But instead of folding the magazine that editors Peter Blackstock and Grant Alden called a hobby that grew into something more, they plan to refurbish their web site (a dandy one worth book marking www.nodepression.net ) and add new text content on a regular basis. Plus, joining with the University of Texas Press, they play to publish two "bookazines" a year that will allow them to include many of the longer articles to see the light of day.
NO DEPRESSION has the right idea. Instead of bemoaning high printing costs (mainly based upon the increasing cost of paper) and the loss of ad revenue, one of the most individualistic and stylish niche magazines simply has decided to accept the technological fate it faces and move on with the times. A bookazine, which the editors say will appear in book stores and not on magazine stands, is a novel idea and one closest in spirit to the original magazine. But the expansion of the website to include current reviews, news, and short articles is also exciting.
Those of us who read MIDNIGHT MARQUEE or MAD ABOUT MOVIES like the smell of the paper, especially that fresh-from-the-printer smell. We like the feel of the laminated cover stock. We like the tactile feel of flipping through the pages and holding something tangible in our hands. As fans of a niche market, we love to possess and hold and store and reread such magazines that have formed an important part of our lives. However, the writing is on the walls. Print magazines of all types seem to be a dying breed. Unless we are a mainstream publication where over half of the pages are advertisements, the cost of publishing hard copy print magazines is becoming prohibitive. Magazines, especially the niche ones, are a dying breed.
Far too many fanboys publish webzines and they are all over the internet. For film fans, most webzines are published so the writer/editor can receive review copies of new DVDs and books, and the quality varies considerably. But as more and more print magazines transition to the Internet, the quality of the best web oriented zines will blow the fanboy enterprises out of the water. And while it costs relatively little to publish a webzine, just like with the fanzines out of the 1960s and 1970s, only the best will survive.
The most difficult thing for such a transition from print to cyberspace is the attitude of the subscriber, the reader, whose bias towards collecting such magazines may be stronger than his/her love of the content contained within. Right now I know many magazine collectors who do not even READ the magazine, but simply buy the periodical to bag and tag, to collect. That mentality will not extend to webzines.
Perhaps cyberspace publishing might be a good thing for those people who crave the content, the news and information, over the pleasure of holding and sniffing a magazine they can physically manipulate and store.
One thing is certain, the times, they are a changin', and like the people at NO DEPRESSION, I view such change with excitement and high hopes as Blackstock and Alden venture as pioneers into the new journalistic terrain. I for one wish them all the luck in the world, and I plan to remain a faithful supporter of all their efforts. But more importantly, the world of magazine publishing is changing radically and more and more print magazines will be following the lead of others into the world of webzine publishing. And this might not be a bad thing.