Wortham redux: “Zine resurgence among the web-savvy”

Zines1

Photo courtesy of Tea Tree Gully Library. It's a city in South Australia, the undisputed land of Slow Media lovers.

 

Despite having access to blogs and knowing how to use them, people — even young ones — still like to make publications by hand. This according to a recent NY Times article re-titled "Raised on the Web, but Liking a Litte Ink" by Jenna Wortham (mentioned in the previous blog post), who also reports creating her own zines with friends.

Since the dawn of blogging almost a decade ago, there's been a print renaissance, experts said. “We’re seeing a flowering of print,” a librarian specializing in periodicals told Wortham. “People are drawn to the experiences of creating and collecting these physical objects."

A 23-year-old pseudonymous blogger — whom Wortham describes as "prominent" — said that he recently began publishing a zine because “It’s satisfying to produce something that people can hold and treasure and value partially for its physicality instead of something that gradually disappears (…) In 2011, it feels like a rare pleasure to hold up a bunch of pieces of paper that are bound together and read them, instead of reading off a screen.”

Amen to that.

(If anonymity has piqued your curiosity, click here for a story in Fast Company about Mr. Mystery's zine launch.)

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