"Fuck the mass Media and its distorted portrayal of life and reality."

Zines are self-published, small press, often photocopied or handmade publications appealing to niche or individualized audiences. What niche or audience a zine appeals to can vary widely, from rollercoasters and hoboing to Christian punk

music and straight-edged living in Lincoln, Nebraska. Zines share three basic qualities: an emphasis on autonomy and independence, a confrontational relationship with mainstream media and culture, and are specifically not-for-profit ventures. The DIY (Do-It-Yourself) aspect of zines reinforces an alternative market system, where zines are shared for information or interest and not specifically for commercial gain, since very few zines turn any kind of profit and for the most part are part-time efforts. (Wright 1997) The main distinction between zines and magazines is that magazines are made for money while zines are made for personal, emotional, or ideological reasons. Many individuals create zines in an effort to create a voice for their beliefs and to express dissatisfaction with one or more elements of mainstream society.

"What is a zine? [Sounds like Maga-] What is the purpose? It is: Adding handmade spice and special reasoning to the media glitz that surrounds us in white noise."

The word zine evolved more from fanzine than magazine. Fanzines are also small press publications but they support a specific hobby or interest, in the case of most fanzines, science fiction. Wright agrees that zines and fanzines share essential qualities like the distribution within a specific community. Though they can often be found in specialty shops zines and fanzines are usually distributed through a selective mail order process through listings in other zines, and collections of zine reviews. They also share a strong identity as an open forum with the inclusion of the publisher’s and contributor’s names and addresses and an encouragement for readers to actively participate in the zine’s creation by sending in response letters and articles. Zines and fanzines are both non-professional, though some may include professional elements such as color, graphics, professional printing and paper.

Zines developed mostly through a need for flexibility in fanzines. Fanzines are about a particular consumer practice, for example a genre/brand of role playing games. Zines, as opposed to fanzines, are not more general but more holistic, describing products, music, ideologies and experiences together as a unified whole. Today the main influence on zine authors is exposure to other zines. For the most part, potential zine authors have an issue or concern they want to express or some time on their hands and look to zines they enjoy as inspiration for their own work.

One of the most important issues in my research was authenticity. Through this project I was asked by a number of individuals in my academic community how I was able to tell which zines were punk, or what 'counted' as a zine. I asked the same question to members of the both the punk and zine community as well as looked into one of the several currently published "zine review" zines. Individuals told me that they just knew that a zine was authentic. One of them, Bryan cited the zine Bust as a zine that was once authentic but had grown too large and now represented a magazine.

In the large zine directory, Zine List several of the listed zines contained reviews lamenting specific publication's loss of authenticity through growth. Bryan also told me that Flipside and Maximum Rock n' Roll, early and influential zines, were not zines anymore. In an email interview Lisa, an editor/writer for HeartattaCk told me that HaC was started as a response to Maximum Rock n' Roll's shift from zine to 'something else.'

In my research I came across a number of publications I chose not too include as punk zines because they did not deal with punk issues, such as Third Coast Music, a country and western music zine from Austin, Texas. However, I counted every publication I came across in my search for zines. I looked for zines listed in zine directories, available for purchase in the zine section of a store, or cataloged in one of the two zine libraries I visited, perhaps too willing to trust the employees', editors' or curators' judgement as to what was a zine.

Of late seventies punk zines, Dick Hebdige said that the authenticity in punk zines lies in the sense of immediacy in the making of zines: "Typing errors and grammatical mistakes, misspellings and jumbled pagination were left uncorrected in the final proof… The overwhelming impression was one of urgency and immediacy, of a paper produced in indecent haste, of memos from the front line" (Hebdige,1979). The avant-garde aspects of zines remind readers of the author’s presence in the creation of zines. Zine publishers often use non-standard forms in page layout and unconventional grammar as well as sometime using underdeveloped publishing techniques, such as cut and past photocopying. As a consequence, zine readers are constantly reminded of the amateurish nature of zines. Being an amateur, or at least appearing unprofessional is an essential part of being a zine maker.

The article, ‘Dying of a Zinc Poisoning,’ in the Austin zine All the Rage, is about a text of questionable zine status produced by the Austin-American Statesman. Author John Cowe questions the motives of the press as "a crass marketing effort at us 18-34 year olds." It’s not the content of the zine he objects to, but what he believes is exploitation of underground culture. "They’re trying to use us. We create something vital. They suck out what they think is marketable." Issues of authenticity are clearly raised in his comment, "calling it a zine was a credibility move, and the target audience doesn’t know what a true zine is." The connection is clear: zines are an authentic part of youth culture and imitations of zines are not. An imitation is zine-like material that is made for profit. It is not the non-mainstream style of a zine that is authentic. (The in-color, glossy, 154-page Punk Planet is still a zine). Authentic punk people make authentic punk zines. That is why punk zines can have nothing to do with stereotypical punk issues, like music, yet still be punk. DIY is one vital aspect of punk identity, the belief that the individual has the power to accomplish and create rather than relying on business and bureaucracy. The DIY approach goes hand in hand with the movement punk started and its sustained critique of mass culture.