Open Road - Info

I've been asked where I find the variety of e-mail-zines that I review. So I figured I'd give away all my trade secrets and sources in one fell swoop, by covering (and sort of reviewing) them. And, as usual, there'll be a 'short take' at the end.

To set the record straight: I'm really not lonely (honest) and my space is quite well lit. I'm not glued to the screen and have resisted ever owning a PC (at least in the past 9 years) to keep my rad level to a minimum and do all my reviews and reading at the office. (BTW, thanks to Merak Projects for providing me with a really kick-ass machine and a 7 Meg ADSL line...)

Anyway back to the original point of this week's ramble: Resources.

Thanks to Chip Rowe Zines Resources, LowBandwidth and Robin Ward at the Mining Co.'s Zine site.

E-mail Resources: E-mail-zine Lists

New-List
http://scout18.cs.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/lwgate/NEW-LIST/

Secret's out: my primary source for e-mail newsletters and publications has to come from a very useful list called New-List, a production of the Internet Scout Project. This is a mailing list that publishes info on new mailing lists. Each new mailing list gets a posting to the list, and only a small fraction (of 50-100 listings per week) are e-mail newsletters/zines. Through a process of quick filtering I remove all the discussion lists and once a month go through the huge stack of newsletters and subscribe to the ones that look interesting. Given the volume of the list, it is not for the faint of heart, but hell if you've the time you can garner some great finds here..

Web Resources: E-mail-zine Lists

Low Bandwidth
http://www.disobey.com/low/

My fave e-mail-zine index site. These guys tend to fit my e-mail delivery philosophy quite well and tend to be more eloquent and determined about e-mail as push. This site is purely e-mail-zines and covers a wide variety of topics with reviews for many of the listings - literally something for everybody. (As a reverse plug, these guys were kind enough to continue the listings and contacts with many of the e-mail-zines that used be listed at Todd Kuipers' E-mail-zines list).

E Journal E-mail Newsletters
http://www.edoc.com/jrl-bin/wilma/ema

I haven't visited this one in quite a while but is another source for e-mail based publications. It's part of the larger and more extensive E Journal site.

Web Resources: General E-zine Lists

Keep in mind these resources don't list just e-mail-zines, but you can usually find an e-mail version of a few of the listed Web e-zines. Also, I'm listing the ones here that I've found useful in my searches; this is not meant to be a comprehensive list.

In no particular order:

Punk Zines
http://www.worldchat.com/vic/wwp/zines.html

According to the site: "zines are a major part of the punk 'culture'". There's a huge number of zines (~450) listed here, almost all of them are on-line and a few have e-mail versions of sorts. There are a fair number of broken links here, but if you persist you'll end up finding some really good content. Loads of those listed, as would be expected, do music and culture reviews, but the points of view and content spectrum are very broad. Don't let the mainstream definition of "punk" frighten you away.

Electric Pen
http://www.execpc.com/~catrina/pen/

I've been sneaking through here a fair bit over the past few weeks in my search for original fiction e-zines. I found a number here that fit the bill and rediscovered a couple that I'd not seen for quite a few years (like DargonZine). Nicely ordered and sorted the full listing numbers 50+ and is available in a genre topic list. As a bonus, it's not a bad site to look at.

New Jour
http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour/

Ok, this one is "crazy big" and lists any (every?) on-line publication. Over 5000 publications listed, with listing dates over the past five years. The site has a search function and lists all items alphabetically. I took one look and kinda gave up, but if you've got the time, there's gotta be some great stuff in here. But, as a nice bonus you can sign-up for e-mail (mmmm... my favorite) notification of new publication listings.

Zine World
http://www.oblivion.net/zineworld/

Sort of a random and small to medium-sized assortment of e-zines. Quite a few good ones here.

ZineRack
http://www.zinerack.com/

The ZineRack is pretty to look at and is actually pretty easy to use. Troll through here and you may find a few new gems. Strangely though, Salon is considered to be a zine. I guess each to their own.

Yahoo - News and Media
http://dir.yahoo.com/News_and_Media/

Yahoo is the largest and most popular site index on the Web and has very extensive listings of on-line zines, newsletters and journals. The three main sub-categories on this page are Journals, Newspapers and Magazines, which yield up extensive links. You might also want to look through the Radio section; many stations do provide an e-mail synopsis version of their news and shows. Like all the above items, there's no guarantee on finding e-mail versions of what you want, but you could lose yourself in here for days...

E-Zine-List
http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/

Geez, I'm in such a rush to give you nice and eclectic lists that I forget the grand-daddy of 'em all: John Labovitz's E-Zine-List. This site is well organized and is the best source on the Web for e-zines.  E-mail, Web, Gopher, FTP, TelNet - you name the on-line delivery mechanism and there's probably one here to fit the bill. An excellent keyword list and a search function makes this easier than some to get through. I really have no idea how many are listed here but it's gotta give New Jour a run for the money.

Electronic Newsstand
http://www.enews.com/

The ultimate in commercial e-publication lists, the Electronic Newsstand is a portal site for an extensive listing of hundreds of well-known print mags and their on-line presences. They also provide an extensive subject guide leading you to hundreds of more obscure print mags, zines and newsletters. This one is worth a stop, especially given its excellent organization and design. Hey, as a bonus you're encouraged to subscribe to the paper versions via the listing interface.

That's about it for this week.  I could continue for another few lines, but hope I've highlighted some good starting points.

If you have a chance, visit the core destination for zines/e-zines Chip Rowe's E-zine Resource Guide .

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