Intersections between classes: Blogs and zines

I love when, near the end of the semester, I begin see connections between materials in my different classes that I never thought I would find. This recently happened to me in my “Women’s Magazines and the Female Journalist” class at CMC when we learned about zines. Although it’s difficult to describe what zines are in one sentence, they are typically self published, not-for-profit magazines, and, in the context of my CMC class, we learned about zines written by and for girls. I knew nothing about zines—I don’t even think I had heard the term before coming to my class—but I immediately saw many intersections between them and blogs. Although zines are still flourishing, it seems like blogs are becoming the zines of today. Both pride themselves in allowing users to “speak” (or write) in an informal, unpolished, and more “natural” way. They are real voices (as much as printed words can represent a voice), and, in both, the writers are very open and honest.

For my final project in this class, I am researching the transformation of diaries from pen and paper to online. Through this research, I have seen that some personal bloggers write online as if they are writing for themselves, while others appreciate and need the knowledge that outsiders are viewing their words and “listening.” This dichotomy in what purpose the writer has in blogging also came out in why girls write for zines. Some use it as a diary; others use it to deconstruct notions of what should be in magazines; and others write for zines to state their opinion on issues ranging from the media’s portrayals of women to whether they like a certain band.

In other words, providing a forum and community for people who have not typically had a voice, or whose voices have not been respected, seems a primary aspect of both zines and many personal blogs. Like blogs communities, zines allow girls to connect and learn from one another. It surprised me to see in zines that, like blogs, in which people can post comments on entries, girls actually write responses to previous articles. Plus, both zines and blogs offer a choice of anonymity that allows freedom of voice.

Finally, both allow publication to be possible, and publication is empowering. In one of the zines we read for class, the writer, who said she never spoke out much but enjoyed communicating through writing, said, “It’s a great rush to see your own viewpoints and opinions in print! It’s a personal validation for me.” It’s through this process of publication, both online and through zines, that others have begun to complain about who is writing. Some people clearly don’t see a point in zines, and, similarly, many elitist bloggers think Livejournal is a “lesser” blog because it is used mostly for the “rants” of teenage girls (though that, too, is debatable).

I know that these connections probably aren’t as fascinating to others as they are to me, but it was great to bring my knowledge of blogs to my CMC class. Of course, people critiqued and added to my ideas of these connections, and a few classmates pointed out that the beauty of zines, as they are in written form right now, is that the creators can somewhat control their readership, through passing them out to certain people at school, etc. This control isn’t nearly as feasible through the internet. Anyway, to end this long post, I just wanted to say that it’s really rewarding to see these inter-class connections!