Did you ever make a zine? You know, those stapled xeroxed compilations of drawings, photos, comics, and journal-style entries you might find at your local record shop or book store. I started out in high school and got into producing zines by way of comics. I wanted to make my own comic book and since hiring a printer wasn’t realistic doing something on a small-scale made more sense. I had no idea that it was such a widespread phenomenom, but back in the early nineties zines were everywhere.
Blogs have a lot in common with zines as far as I can tell. They function in a lot of the same ways. Both blogs and zines are a way to speak to complete strangers in a mediated way. It is simutaneously personal and impersonal. It is often more of a one way conversation, a monologue. They both allow their creators to declare a small amount individuality. When you write a blog or a zine you are saying “I have something I want to say.” Many people just want recognition or attention. In this way blogging exhibits the more annoying characteristics of the zine world. It can be amazingly cliquish, banal, and shallow. Not completely unlike high-school.
Take some of the blogging world’s most notable luminaries. These are the people you might see in an article on blogging. People like Jason Kottke of kottke.org or Glenn Reynolds from Instapundit.com. I don’t know why they’re luminaries, but start reading blogs and you’ll see their names. Predictably, since most journalists are susceptible to fads we’ve seen a lot of articles on blogging and a lot of name-dropping by journalists of the same small group of people. Regardless of what anyone in the media or in the blogging world says, blogs as they stand today are not a threat to classic journalism. I would say roughly 10-20% of blogs are worth reading on a daily basis. For one thing, many bloggers won’t research a subject if it requires leaving the house. This makes it difficult to gather real reporting or news. Secondly, there is no pretense to objectivity when blogging. Even when someone does try to be objective it is usually a calculated move to add the trappings of reason and sensibility to their opinions. I could just be overly cynical.
The main problem with many blogs is that they’re incredibly boring. A few really good ones are not….for some reason I’ve really been enjoying the sewing blog by Mena Trott of MT Fame. Sewwrong provides I guess my main problem is that I see blogging as something having so much potential for change, much of it unrealized. Maybe as more and more people gain awareness of it some good collaborative efforts may be born.
Yes! Another ex-zinester here. Blogs are cool because they are free.