There are actually quite a large number of grassroots jazz tabloids, from New York's All About Jazz to similar efforts from Vermont to Los Angeles. Those strike me as being far closer to zine culture than to mainstream press.
Names! We need more names!
but beyond that, and back to the technology debate, the whole story didn't stop with the xerox machine. i've started two 'zine-like publications in the past, more political than musical, one in chicago and one in brooklyn, both in the '90s. the xerox revolution was followed by the home computer revolution. desktop publishing made it possible to look more pro. sure, the taped-and-photocopied pages of punk zines fit with and helped to define the aesthetic they were covering, but they also were working with what they had. and while paper costs have gone up, much of the other costs associated with print publishing have gone down. so i wouldn't take glossiness, necessarily, as a mainstreaming factor. if you look around, there are punk zines now that are glossy and have nice (if often indecipherable) lay out. the next revolution in self-publishing was, of course, the internet. now no one knows what kind of paper you're on. i'd be remiss not to plug - <www.squidsear.com> cheers. kg np: wfmu.org _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus