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Thread: "I should start an e-zine"

  1. #1
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    Cool "I should start an e-zine"

    GQ acquired Pitchfork. Rolling Stone was run by assholes. Consequence of Sound was just the worst kind of clickbait for years, but they eventually got their shit together. I kinda stopped paying attention to them so I don't have anything good or bad to say.
    @sweeterthan - you said we ought to talk about doing a thing.

    What's that thing look like, to you?

    Is it a variation of "News & Articles" that I can spin off from the Hotline's codebase, with a "Reviews" section too? Reviews of releases, of concerts?

    Sketch out a skeleton of the idea here.

    Right off the bat, I'll tell you that if it's something I end up kicking off, the initial expectation I'm setting is that all involvement is volunteer-based. At the risk of sounding like a conservative chud: I recognize that's not a great stance in an era where the federal minimum wage hasn't been raised in a decade and a half, and cost of living is outrageous. Even if this does somehow become a revenue generating enterprise, I don't really have any expectation that it will be anyone's full-time job. That's not the point right now. I think that the history of how I've run my internet things makes it clear that I do these things to scratch an itch, not to get anyone rich.

    If this is something we do, that attitude might ultimately be what keeps this stuck in first gear, and maybe it never *really* takes off.

    Also be cognizant that participating in something like this is absolutely going to open you up to the most petty bullshit from people who aren't doing what you do. Probably in this thread alone, you'll get facepalms from people who already don't like how you do things or what you have to say. You'll have to rise above that, while also somehow allowing room for accepting criticism of your own process. It's quite the thing to sign up for (if we do this).

    It's also something that's going to take a few months to stand up, and will likely be thankless for at least a year or two. If you want it to get bigger and better, it's going to take a group effort. At this stage, I see my role as sort of standing up the tech and helping get things going, probably being some kind of director or editor-in-chief for at least a little bit, but I've got a lot going on and I'm not going to be able to check in every day.

    I've given thought to this at least two other times in the past, at times when I definitely had more sort of 'social capital' that would have kickstarted things better, but I knew I didn't have the space to commit to something like that. Having recently revamped ye olde NIN Hotline in a way I feel better about, I'm willing to give this more thought, particularly since NIN News is pretty sparse.

    Who's in?

  2. #2
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    yes.

    and maybe ETS could be the comments section, like how Macrumors's comments are just their forum.

    in a way, we already have this.

  3. #3
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    I know you’re aware I already said this on Twitter but I’d love to be involved.

    I have some movie and music review experience.

    As for criticism, it’s an election year so all the dipshit trolls that have plagued this place in the past will surely come around no matter what.

  4. #4
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    i’m always impressed with your big picture visions, Matt. I’ve been feeling a little lost creatively the past few years so i’d love to work on something low stakes & pro bono. i’ve actually been writing something that i wasn’t sure what to do with but this could be an opportunity for that.

    here are some questions i came up with yesterday:

    do you have a theme/focus in mind? is it music? music & arts?

    is the idea to take submissions from anyone?

    how often would we update it? monthly? quarterly? or by submission? meaning (like the hotline) each time a submission is approved the feed would update. that might be fun.

    who approves what is posted/shared by the zine?

    we can go at your pace bc i work on and off these days (contractor life) so i may not have consistent time for it either. i can serve an admin/assistant role to keep things moving and assist you with establishing the site.

    i’m looking forward to seeing what happens next. thanks for putting this out there.

  5. #5
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    > do you have a theme/focus in mind? is it music? music & arts?

    I think it's important to have a fairly narrow scope from the start, but if I take a practical approach: What staff want to write about will influence the direction a site like this would go. Primarily, music seems like it's what needs the most curation. I think it's fine to have reviews of movies and TV shows, but you have to consider what the value is there. Right out of the gate, before any writers' personas are known, there's going to be literally no one that cares what strangers on a new website think about the new True Detective. There are a million tweets, skeets, vlogs, and podcasts that will cover that topic. Music has a much larger discovery problem, given how much of it there is out there, and how much gets published every. day. Developing a curatorial voice, several curatorial voices, strikes me as the more important and potentially unique offering.

    I think that's another important focus is that it's being done as writing, particularly up front. It's not video, it's not podcasts. It's text and photos or illustrations. Man, it would be cool to have an illustration staff, but again - that's valuable work.

    > is the idea to take submissions from anyone?

    I guess this depends on how much momentum it has at the start. If there are five people charged with populating pages with words, and we can't keep up, but there are 20 people knocking at the door asking to be published, it's sensible to start adding to the volunteer staff. Maybe this is elitist of me, but at the moment I kind of like the general word of mouth that's already happening, where you are pulling in people that might have an interest, and they're pulling in people that might have interest. The bottom line is that there's still going to be some level of editorial process, it's not unfettered access to publish whatever you want, but this thing would also need to find enough mass that it can start to propel itself (collectively), from a content standpoint.

    >how often would we update it? monthly? quarterly? or by submission? meaning (like the hotline) each time a submission is approved the feed would update. that might be fun.

    When the Hotline started, it was literally just a repository of interesting information that had come through IRC, for people who weren't logged in at the time. As I started to formalize it, I had this loose idea of how to keep things perpetually interesting:
    0) #nin99 was your realtime firehose of information
    1) Forums weren't as realtime as chat, but were more realtime than the website.
    2) Updates throughout the day, organized by day.
    3) Weekly digests via email (somewhat jankily run by Feedburner via the RSS feed)
    4) Biweekly cartoons from the esteemed Meathead
    5) Monthly archive pages
    6) Yearly, I did an April Fools gag, back when that was the fashionable thing to do.

    For something new out of the gate, I think a weekly cadence is maybe a good start? (Guess I need to think through a publishing system, in that respect.) But maybe have an ongoing 'news' section a la the Hotline's front page, just to keep people interested.

    >who approves what is posted/shared by the zine?

    MMMMMEEEEEEE. ME ME ME.

    Okay seriously though - coming out the gate, I don't know if it's the right approach, but I think the thing to do is more akin to "Ask forgiveness not permission" and encourage that there's output, with the understanding that if content gets walked back, it's nothing personal. There is, without a doubt, going to be some point where that's going to generate feelings, and we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

    To better answer the question: maybe similar to ETS administration, there's something akin to an editorial board, with mutual trust in each other's judgment. I think that coming out of the gate, I'll probably take the sort of 'founder' role, if everyone's cool with that, so not unlike the Hotline or ETS, I can also just be like "fuck that" and nip something in the bud should the need arise.

    >we can go at your pace bc i work on and off these days (contractor life) so i may not have consistent time for it either. i can serve an admin/assistant role to keep things moving and assist you with establishing the site.

    Another important element of founding the Hotline was starting off with more than one person. It was me, John Sampson, and Paul LaBarbera at the beginning. That way there was decent coverage, which later became round-the-clock coverage as the staff ballooned into the dozens. I think you'd also do well in, for want of a better term, marketing the site - but that's just a suggestion, I'm not gonna make anyone do something they don't like.

  6. #6
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    Would be happy to help out in some capacity. I’ve always enjoyed adding content to ninwiki over the years.

  7. #7
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    My zinester ass has been in retirement for far too long. Count me in.

  8. #8
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    I'd like to write as well, carving out enough time to write in depth about a single music release sounds lovely.

  9. #9
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    ETS All Stars

    Thanks everyone for your interest. I guess at this point I should start sketching out what "it" even looks like.

  10. #10
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    I'd be willing to be involved in some way, although I have no idea how. haha

  11. #11
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    I’d definitely be interested in contributing in some capacity. I’ve written for a number of different music websites over the years (can pass along something of a portfolio if required). I’m not writing for a website/magazine at the moment, but am constantly writing for myself anyway.

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