Do people like online magazines in general?

[Amelia G]

I just meant to post this photo Forrest and I shot of Gen from The Genitorturers in a goofy promotional picture posting thingie. Only I ended up writing a lot more about the background of how the shot came to be than I'd set out to.



Just been thinking a lot lately about how the internet was supposed to make it so everybody had access to get their words out. When desktop publishing came along, it permitted all sorts of people, including yours truly, to put their views and aesthetics out there in ways previously mostly available only to the megarich. It seems like a disproporionately small number of internet sites are really publications though. It is harder to get good people to contribute to online magazines than print ones too. Sure, ten million people will see their words or photos instead of thirty-six thousand and now maybe they could get paid for what they do, but somehow very few folks really get it together to produce magazine type content online. I think maybe I will see if I can get Forrest to drive my broken-ankle-having ass to the magazine store later today. Feeling a little nostalgic. Maybe it is the clean air and rainy overcast weather.

Oh, and here is what I wrote about the photo of Gen: We've worked with her a lot over the years. Although we put her on the cover of Blue Blood in print, oddly we have shot her not once, but twice, for magazine covers that ended up not happening. We shot her for the cover of Juggernaut before they sadly went out of business. We also shot her for the cover of a certain supposedly Gothic magazine which was going to take Gen's band credit off of the cover picture because a certain supposedly Gothic mall store told them to. Needless to say, Gen was not too thrilled at the idea of not having her band credited, so we told the magazine they couldn't use the shoot, even though we'd already spent the dough and time on doing it. I figure it is always nice to see Gen anyway and we do work well together and I wasn't about to throw away a long positive relationship just to have one more magazine cover in my clip book portfolio.

I sometimes miss the days of the zine explosion where supposedly underground publications genuinely really were trying to service their scenes.

Are there any old print zines you really miss?

What types of articles and/or features would you all most like to see in the online magazine portion of Blue Blood?

[One Eyed Cat]

I loved and still love the print zines. My favorite is Cometbus by Aaron Elliott. Online media is nowhere near reaching its potential. Propaganda was cheesy but everyone loved the photos. Books and magazines and print just still have an aura that has yet to be reproduced online. BlueBlood in print was great. As far as the online magazine, I'd like to see it (or anyone) delve deeper into the influences of gothic bands and artists. I think the gothic archetypes still resonate beyond the aesthetics. I see punk zines in the same way. Both seem more of an attitude than a "scene" at this point. There has been a lot left unsaid.

OEC

[sheramil]

i kind of miss the inane optimism of Mondo 2000. they were such blatant Macintosh Fundamentalists, though, you had to bite down on a folded piece of leather before reading the "what we used to make this issue" page.

online... there's an overwhelming perception, probably from people whose first encounters with the net were free, through university, that everything online should be free. imagine, paying folding money in exchange for a slightly different pattern of magnetic dots on your hard drive.

i can also recall experiencing a kind of cerebral orgasm at a positive review, in Blue Blood, of something i wrote. heh. i miss that, too.

[BrightStar]

I like both kinds of zines. **