KQED just published The Needles & Pens Twenty-Three Dollar Adventure, in which writer Suzanne Kleid asks the question, “If I wanted to get 4 or 5 great zines, and spend about twenty bucks, what should I get?” The helpful staff hooks her up with some good stuff, and she sets about picking it apart.
Now I love Needles + Pens, and I spend $20 there often, and I’m glad they’ve gotten this good press. But after reviewing her haul, Kleid concludes:
Blogs are a dime a dozen. They require very little financial investment on the part of the creator, and none at all on the part of the reader. It takes a bigger, more special burst of inspiration to make a physical object out of your life experience.
Ouch. I mean, maybe she sees it that way because she blogs for big corporate media entities like KQED and McSweeney’s. But you can’t tell me that some zine is better than WHATIMSEEING because somebody stapled some papers together and Plug1 didn’t.
Don’t want to end on a negative note though… What great titles have you guys come across at N+P? (I tend to love everything by that Please Let Me Help guy, Titty City for the articles, and I hear good things about StreetWorthy.)
Needles + Pens on Myspace (for bulletin updates like “Hey KQED wrote about us”).
