Fanzines of the 21st Century

I've been re-reading Tony Parsons The Stories We Could Tell - after all, one of the main characters is a thinly disguised Iggy Pop - who's playing tomorrow at the Big Day Out.

One of the characters writes a left wing fanzine called Red Mist, and reading about this makes me think that blogs are the fanzines (or minority political newspapers) of the 21st century. The difference is, in 1977 you had to *want* to spend 20p on buying Class War. Nowadays, you just have to click a link.

Which means that ideas and attitudes that didn't make the mainstream a few years ago now get wide circulation - to the annoyance of those like Deborah Coddington who expect the nation's reading material to fit inside certain boundaries. Way back when, I'm quite sure that you could find a poorly duplicated A4 mag comparing David Lange to Stalin - now you just need to click over to Sir Humphreys.

Strikes me, if you don't like it, then don't buy it - even if "it" is available free on the web instead of being sold by a lad on a street corner.