Online MagaZINES by the Dozens

By Don Rittner

Computers and the Net have made it easy to send email to friends and family, find information, and check stocks. However, one of the most important features of the Net is the repository and dissemination of points of view in a form better known as magazines. On the Net magazines are referred to as zines, or e-zines, short for electronic magazine. There are thousands of them.

Ever since Gutenberg invented the printing press, we have had an alternative media. Lansingburgh published a newspaper as early as 1787. In Troy, there were 19 different newspapers published during the 19^th Century. And even in the 1980's, I published an alternative magazine in Troy called HardCopy for the Common Good. It seems everyone wants to be a publisher.

Before there were electronic zines, hardcopy editions were published. Credit is given to Apple Computer and their Macintosh computer for the rapid growth of zines during the 1980's. The easy to use Macintosh personal computer appeared in 1984 and made it possible for anyone to produce well designed and low cost publications. The following year, with the introduction of Apple's LaserWriter with reproduction quality printing capability, anyone with a few thousand dollars could start their own publishing company, and many did.

To keep track of this rising number of alternative magazines, a local Rensselaer fellow began publishing a hardcopy magazine called FactSheet Five that listed and reviewed the other zines. Hundreds of them were published during the 1980s. Many zines went online when the Net became public during the early 1990's.

For a publisher, the Net is ideal since it saves a great deal of money on printing costs, and also it reaches a far larger audience.

One online database now lists over 3000 zines, virtually all available for free.

There are subject areas that you and I might find offensive but the Net represents pure democracy. Everyone has the right to publish anything they want on the Net and you and I have the right not to read any of it.

It's fairly easy to start your own zine. First you need something to write about. That may seem obvious but if you can put all of your complaints, issues, or interest in one issue, then publishing a zine is not for you.

Zines are published frequently such as weekly, monthly, bimonthly, and quarterly. Some are daily.

If you confine yourself to a mailing list type zine, it 's the easiest to maintain. Keep it to fewer than 32k in length so folks don't have to download it to read. They will be able to read it as a simple email message. You can use a mailing list service to send it to members making your job confined to simply putting it together.

If you go all out and produce a replica of a printed magazine, you can place it on a Web site for folks to read online, or they can download it and read it at their pleasure. For example you can create your magazine in QuarkXpress and use another program that will make an identical looking web version of it. There are various software applications that let you format good looking magazines and you can find them in the various online software repositories mentioned in a previous column (you are saving my columns right?). Adobe Acrobat is a popular program for creating electronic versions of manuals, books, and magazines and you can read them online (better have a fast Net connection though).