In the late Eighties and early Nineties newspaper journalists in search of human-interest copy started doing pieces on zines. It's a natural. Dailies, like the Toronto Star, love to generationally inform their parental subscribers and present them with young people who have controversial things to say. These stories usually have a picture of the zinester sitting amongst her pile of zines or in a regretful pose, along with some quotes about why she took up her crazy hobby.

Is all press good press? If you are interested in making waves in the mainstream, probably. But if you dislike the mainstream - if you have put a lot of time into participating in a community that thinks the status quo sucks ass - then probably not. The zinesters I've talked to usually feel like they've been misrepresented or trivialized by the mainstream press. Journalistic conventions are what make this difficult to avoid, for a number of reasons.

Journalists prefer to use verbal quotes rather than zine excerpts, despite the fact that most zinesters are better writers than speakers. There is very little chance (and to be fair, space) for the zine community's history to be recounted, and so zinesters are presented without context - the lone gunman syndrome.

Usually, a way to purchase a zine (and often the reason why a zinester consents to a story) will not be included because it breaks the rhythm of the style. When it is included, the orders that come in are often few, and are simple consumer purchases - Here's my dollar, Here's my address. This is in contrast to a chatty letter from someone who knows that a considerable perk of doing zines is the letters and the feedback. A person who does a zine will almost always prefer a trade over the token dollar or two because with that trade comes the possibility of making a connection with a like-minded person.

At least you got your picture in the paper! is something your mom would say, and our culture's mania with celebrity makes mainstream media exposure highly valued. But the zine community, while affinity-based and cliquish, is basically non-hierarchical: anyone can do a zine, and everyone who does one is more or less equal. Media attention directed towards one zine throws that out of whack.

Mass media needs to implicitly answer the question, why is this newsworthy? Therefore, a zine with an easily summarized topic will be covered more often than a zine about an average person's life, even if the latter is of much higher quality. The poorly written Temp Slave gets far more ink than the influential Cometbus, confirming most zinesters' suspicions about how mainstream media always gets it wrong. It's sad to think that for many people Temp Slave is their only exposure to zines. In most cases when a zinester gets an interview they can expect a few orders, a moment of fame in a forum that they don't necessarily value, and a vastly simplified explanation of the things they write about, including a playing up of their weirdness. More or less it's a zero-sum proposition, which accounts for the reason why once is often enough for the average zinester.

The Zine Book Phase

After a few hundred of these stories, mainstream media outlets felt safe labelling the decade-old community a new phenomenon. The Zine Explosion! was declared, and several books on zines appeared.

One kind of zine book consists of reviews of zines, which list many that are no longer published (such is the nature of zines, they do not necessarily live on indefinitely). Another kind is anthologies, some of which misguidedly reset the text into distinctly unziney pages. Some zinesters have compiled their material into books, with varying degrees of success. A few books analyze the history of how zines emerged by those who have actually made zines themselves (the best is Stephen Duncombe's Zines: Notes from the Underground, Verso 1997). None have been bestsellers even though they hypothetically have a built-in market. But a demographic that distrusts hype and corporate brands, not to mention a hesitance to spend more than a dollar or two at once, is not easily targeted. Certain key elements in what make zines appealing, such as the immediacy and the potential for personal contact with the writer, have been killed by the aloofness of big publishing.

When zine books receive attention, the coverage usually comes with commentary on the zine phenomenon. Naturally, this demands talking heads who can comment on the whys and wherefores. Zine writers are often unwilling to play this part, or they are too focused on their political agendas to be credible. So, the editors of review zines and organizers of zine fairs are contacted for their opinions. They appear to be closer to the journalistic ideal of objectivity. Due to the fast-paced media environment, the same reliable people are called upon again and again. A few have emerged as spokespeople.

While this is quite natural in many ways, there's a basic flaw. Is it possible to be a mass media spokesperson for a community that feels disenfranchised by that very media? The problem became more complex when the spokespeople began parlaying their exposure into a permanent niche. After quitting their day jobs, they became more concerned with presenting a topical view of "their" subject, rather than the bafflingly diverse one that would be truer to the spirit of the community. Thus began the quirkification that now exists.

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