Niche zine culture survived its distributor collapse by migrating to weblogs

Evidence

The next link in the Brandian chain was an alternative zine called Boing Boing, launched in 1988 by Mark Frauenfelder and his wife, Carla Sinclair, about “comic books, cyberpunk science fiction, consciousness technology, curious phenomena.” After reaching an impressive 17,500 print run, the Boing Boing zine hit a wall in the late 1990s when its distributors went bankrupt. Frauenfelder later heard about a fledgling company called Blogger pushing a new technology called “web logging.” On January 21, 2000, he gave the Boing Boing website its own “blog” and posted a few links each week. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 162

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Riot Grrl zines bridged feminist consciousness-raising and the web’s personal homepage culture. — Theresa M. Senft, Camgirls: Celebrity and Community in…, 62