It seems that Chicago has a thriving underground magazine publishing or “zine” scene–“self-published magazines. Aimed at the erudite and hip, attention-grabbing local titles from The Baffler to WhiteWalls and TENbyTEN have won small but loyal audiences from New York to Los Angeles and beyond.” This article in the Chicago Tribune highlights how small magazines are putting Chicago on the publishing map.
“Launched as improbable experiments, Chicago’s small-press journals range from Sahlin’s austere, type-only polemics to the most recent, all-poster issue of Select magazine — which aims to inspire an “interventionist art” of utopian street propaganda and peace activism. Blowing in from various precincts, the journals share a certain common ground — a schoolyard freshness, an outsize ambition and a refusal to be defined by what you’ve read before. Seizing their place at the interstice between art and politics, several find themselves unexpectedly tipping toward financial stability.”
In other Chicago publishing news, Chicago magazine won big at the recent National Magazine Awards. It won for general excellence in the 100,000-250,000 circulation category. It was lauded for mixing “meaty investigative journalism with clever service packages to create the very model of a modern major city magazine.”
