London Zine Symposium

http://www.zineswap.com/?p=417

http://www.ameliasmagazine.com/art/london-zine-symposium-2011-a-review/2011/04/18/

Anne Pickles - Cumbria Newspapers

My meeting with Anne Pickles from Cumbria Newspapers was arranged for me to find out what impact the Internet and technology has had on local print media.

The following points are what I discovered:

• Websites generally need to use print as a promotion to get people to visit a website. A website cannot be discovered if the web address isn’t printed anywhere.
•  Websites need a strategy for making money. If all stories were posted on the website, people could view them for free instead of buying the printed version for 50p. The strategy is usually through advertising because space can be sold to advertisers just like it is in print.
•  Some people have only have the Internet as a way of access and vice-versa so print and digital work well alongside each other.
•  Sometimes using the website to provide only a headline or the beginning of a story can leave readers short-changed and can give the newspaper as a whole a bad reputation. Therefore, it needs to be selective. Print will always be decided first before anything is put on the website. The website then doesn’t included every story just a selected amount.
•  Social networking is used to promote the newspaper. It helps build contacts and relationships with the readers as well as interacting with them e.g. competitions. The Twitter feed and Facebook status can display breaking news like when roads or schools are closed. People need to know these things immediately and the Internet can provide that. Vital information can be distributed much more efficiently online.  
•  Iphone and Android apps are used selectively in the same way that the website is used. This provides accessibility for people wherever they are as well as promotion for the newspaper.
• These elements, whether it is print, website, social networking or apps, work to support each other.
•  There is a fight to hold onto print so it is vital that credible media still exists. With bloggers, you are not always guaranteed the truth as they are hidden behind a computer screen. You don’t know who the writer is and are unsure of certainty in the information that is given.
•   iPads haven’t really had any affect on the local media around Cumbria. Competitions are held in the newsprint to win an iPad as they have not been a threat mainly because of them being so expensive along with signal being unreliable just like with mobile phones.
•  There is a nervousness of Permanence V Fleeting. People seem to think that newsrooms nowadays are paper-free offices because we all sit at computer screens. However, hard copies of everything are always printed in case of unexpected crashing or files can be lost easily. I’ve still got print work that I have kept for years so that I can keep going back to it. This is something that isn’t as easy with online media.
•  The Internet has opened media up to a whole new size audience. The twitter page attracts people from different countires and all over the world who comment on articles they have read and enjoyed.
• The Daily Mail are still successful in print alongside a great website with fully written stories. They spend a lot of money on the website and printed version is still as popular as ever. This is probably down to personal taste and obviously they appeal to different audiences.
•  There is no good reason why the two shouldn’t coexist, they just need a proper strategy. Advertising needs to be sold to both and in an effective way.
•  Personally, print will always have the upper hand in media. There is nothing better than holding what you are about to read in your hand – it makes the experience much more personal. In the mean time, we are gradually becoming more prepared for a time where digital could take over print sales. 

Rocker Zine

http://www.rockerzine.com/

Rocker is an online lifetsyle zine for mature hipsters. I contacted the editor to find out why they chose the online route instead of a printed copy.
Here is the email i received back.

Hello Katie,

Thanks for getting in touch, I've posted some answers to your
questions below. Best of luck with your dissertation 

> How was it decided that Rockerzine would be best produced online? 

To be honest, when I started Rockerzine I wanted it to be a print
magazine, but the startup costs involved with such a venture were so
high I went with online first. For me, it's been a learning curve
having come from a print media background. So realizing for online
ventures it's important to have video in every story, that you can use
links to things you allude to in your writing (rather than explaining
them), that it is pretty much impossible to protect your copyright,...
all of these things are challenges/differences in online media that
are very different than print. 

> Do you think there is now a decline in print media because of the advance in technology and the Internet? 

It seems beyond disputing this is true, and it's sad. The obvious
reason is cost. It costs money to print items you hold in your hand,
and cost far less to put things up on a website. But I think that
something can be lost from the tactile experience of print as well as
the archival nature of it. As a professional, I've written for a
number of websites that no longer exist, so my writing for them also
no longer exists. Imagine having written a book, people buy it and
read it, but then the publisher of your book goes out of business, so
it's not that they just stop selling your book, they actually go to
the house of everyone who bought your book and take away their copy so
they can't read it again. That is what writing on the internet is
like.

The internet is a transient place that exists in the now, but in 10-20
years there will be no box of old photographs or keepsakes to look
through and recall the meme you loved today. All your LOLcats will
have gone to kitty cat heaven. If I gave you a bunch of computer
files which were 20 years old full of photos etc from the past it's
unlikely they'd even be in a format your computer could read. So then
what happens to these "memories" we share only there in spaces
controlled by other companies? Facebook, like any other company
(Friendster anyone?), may one day shut down and take all your clever
posts and connections to friends with it. In some ways the internet
is another part of our throwaway culture, and I find that sad. 

> I have noticed that there is a Twitter page for Rockerzine. What role does
> social networking play in the distribution of the magazine? 

Social networking allows Rockerzine to interact with other
professional entities - artists we write about, fan groups,
nightclubs, record labels,... to let them know about our coverage of
either their work, or things they are a fan of. Our ability to grow
and find new readers relies on making these connections in lieu of, or
in addition to, advertising. In one way it's positive because you can
find and connect with pockets of people who are interested in what you
do, but the downside is you could spend a lifetime trying to find each
of these groups due to the spread out and obscenely specialized nature
of the internet. For instance, if you write an article about a band,
you would do well to try and connect with the twitter and facebook of:
The band, each band member, the many fan groups for the band, the fan
groups in various countries / languages for band, any groups about the
genre the artist you reported on,... finding and connecting with each
of these groups takes time. I feel like social media marketing is a
job that is a hungry baby that you could feed forever but always wants
more. I'd say the best part of the work our Facebook page is seeing
our fans talking about music while indirectly talking about their
shared experience of being rock fans who are over a certain age. It's
made me understand how lucky I and many of our staff are here in
Boston to have a supportive community of people no longer in their 20s
who still go out to rock shows. Many of our readers talk about their
isolation from others to share their excitement about music with and
that is a hard thing. It also gives you a very easy way to find out
what your readers want and need from you. 

> Has a printed version of Rockerzine ever been considered or do you think it
> will be considered in the future? 

Yes and yes. For our target demographic (music fans 35+) I think a
print magazine would be of more interest to them and be able to
capture their attention better. I'd like it to be the kind with bells
and whistles - a flexi-disc or premium to come with it. Again, it's
really a matter of cost. I think that in the not too distant future
we're going to see a big opening for premium print publications, in
the same way that kids now have a lot of interest in vinyl, I think
that print also is going to come back in that way. Big publishers
will probably never return to the level that they were at before, but
I do see a future for print, just a more dynamic one than its past. 

Not sure if you are covering this in your dissertation, but you are
aware I hope that writers incomes have changed due to internet
publishing? That the very profession of journalism has been deeply
devalued due to the rise of online media? 

Best to you - Erin

Andy Schwartz - New York Rocker

I contacted the publisher of New York Rocker fanzine to find out why the printed version ended and why he now uses a blog. 
Andy Schwartz replied straight away with answers presented below my questions. This is great for my primary research. 


Hi Andy,

Thanks for the reply. What was the reason for New York Rocker magazine ending in 1982?

Long run on a shoestring, the magazine finally ran out of money. Major record labels, our most important advertisers, began moving money from print ad budgets into video production.

How do you think magazines and fanzines been affected by technology and the Internet?

The most adroit and/or best-financed publications such as Rolling Stone or Wax Poetics have incorporated the Internet into their overall publishing and marketing strategies.

Do you think there has been a decline in print as people can easily view the media online, using their phones, iPads etc?

Internet access has brought on a decline in newsstand sales of music magazines the same as for The New York Times.

Social networking and blogging make it so much easier for people to interact now. What are the reasons for you setting up a New York Rocker blog?

Only to have an outlet for my own occasional writing, and to make sure the domain names weren't bought by someone else.

Will print always be the best form of design?

There can be excellence in print design and excellence in Web design. 

If you were to set up New York Rocker as a zine again, would you take the print or online route for distribution?

Both, in the manner of Rolling Stone or Wax Poetics.

Thanks for your time,

Katie Roberts

Jean Baudrillard Hyper-reality

http://cyndiconn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/Jean-Baudrillard-1.pdf

In his essay The Hyper-realism of Simulation (originally published in 1976), Jean Baudrillard asserts that the use and abundance of media, signs, and symbols has so bombarded our culture that “reality itself, as something separable from signs of it ...vanished in the information-saturated, media-dominated contemporary world” (1018). Photography, mass production, television, and advertising have shaped and altered authentic experience to the point that “reality” is recognized only when it is re-produced in simulation. Truth and reality are mediated and interpreted to an extent that culture can no longer distinguish reality from fantasy. Baudrillard terms this blurring of mediated experience and reality “hyper-reality.”

Further removed from their original meaning, signs and symbols become imitations of facsimiles and reality and fiction dissolve into indistinguishable imitations. Baudrillard considered this culture of hyper-reality an advanced stage of life-as-art: “it manages to efface even this contradiction between the real and the imaginary. Unreality no longer resides in the dream or fantasy, or in the beyond, but in the real’s hallucinatory resemblance to itself.” (1018)

The signs ultimately mean nothing and therefore form their own abstracted meaning, and in Baudrillard’s words, “an air of nondeliberate parody clings to everything” (1020). Simulation, abstraction, and hyper-reality ultimately define contemporary reality.

Subculutres Evaluation

WHAT I HAVE DISCOVERED SO FAR...

A subculture is a group of people who differentiate from the parent culture and brings together individuals to allow them to develop a sense of identity. There is a distinction between an accepted majority style and a subculture as an active minority style. Dick Hebdige argued that a subculture is subversion to normality. They are critiscised and perceived as negative.  Subcultures are difficult to imagine without their own type of music as they come together around a certain music genre, however, there is much more to them.

Compared to the clear balance of gender in the mainstream, punks and skinheads had an influence of transgender fashion. I think this could have been influenced by the clear gender difference during the 1950’s which they rebelled against. Watching the BBC’s 1952 show taught me what could have influenced subcultures to emerge. DIY became popular in the 50’s, which later created DIY fashion and bricolage in the Punk subculture as an anti-consumerist statement. Bricolage is a postmodern term to represent taking elements and regurgitating them to create something new. This means incorporating items typically utilised for other purposes e.g. the safety pin shifting the purpose from practicality to fashion and bin bags were warn as part of the bin men strike during the ‘winter of discontent’.

The punk movement was all handmade, cheap design and was deliberately crude and energetic with the use of collage and hand lettering. Cheap fanzines were published and most famously were Jamie Reid’s Sex Pistols designs. This style of work represented the fashion and beliefs of the subculture. 

Although a subculture may be revolutionary, differentiating itself from parent culture, eventually it will be brought back into the system. The subculture will be turned into a commodity, a style that people can buy. Everything that is 'different' will become normal by making it familiar or part of mass culture e.g. punk rock fashion becoming mainstream with stores like ‘Claire’s Accessories’ selling safety pin jewelry and studded dog collars to teenagers as fashion. Globalisation plays an important part as brands have strong associations and become a ‘sponge’ to subcultures but sometimes they also get absorbed by the mainstream. A great example is Dr.Martens. Once being adopted by the punks, they are now part of the parent culture with high street stores like Topshop selling them. People become more aware which makes them popular, usually influenced by celebrities.

Punk music had a very anti-commercial sentiment that then turned into commercial success.

They started making money and becoming successful which meant their ideology lost all meaning. Punk fashion was then in advertisements and high street stores or magazines. This idea of Punks being anti-commercial is contradicted by The Sex Pistols reforming on many occasions. Cyberspace played an important part, especially because Myspace was so music based. Maybe cyberspace is going to become the route of subcultures as it becomes more popular. 

Marshall Mcluhan

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/nov/01/comment.internet




This Youtube clip of Marshall Mcluhan discussing his theory explains how all information at the time was taken from books - libraries were extremely busy. He talks about 'moving out of a print culture' because the nature of print's importance is changing. Books roles are changing and we are moving into a 'Global Village.' Mcluhan hints towards a description of The Internet and how people will be able to communicate all over the world.

http://www.thenation.com/article/162567/fifty-years-global-village-remembering-marshall-mcluhan-his-100th-birthday#