The COVID-19 era has certainly seen an acceleration of the trend towards online news consumption rather than in print. The education sector has seen shifts from book to pdf, e-learning has pivoted to online platforms, and many such changes have affected the sales of printed material.
- Newspapers for clubs
Despite this, however, as the news industry continues to evolve, there is no doubt that newspaper printing will survive. There are now a wide variety of custom print publication applications available online inspiring creativity. Consider the potential of a newspaper dedicated to your club activities. There’s nothing like a newspaper to keep in touch with all your members and present a unique hard copy to tell “the world” what you’ve done.
What’s more, printed newsletters can promote the values and aims of your club, inspired social cohesion, and attract new members. Newspapers are ideal in preserving and advancing custom editorial content; they have the potential to build communities by recording shared stories and ideas and giving a platform for voices traditionally ignored by the mainstream media.
Fanzines, or “zines”, have a long history, dating back as far as the 1930s, when fans of science fiction shared their enthusiasm for niche topics in print. Mostly self-financed and self-published by a single person, early zines were made on typewriters, copied via carbon paper, or duplicated by mimeograph and distributed by hand. Zines were a way of connecting with others of similar interests and sharing a common love of something particular.
- Forming social connections & earning respect
Desktop publishing and print-on-demand technology have certainly made that process easier today, but the principle remains the same. The intention of early zines was hardly to make money; these publications earned social capital in other ways: forming social connections, earning respect, or subverting mainstream culture. The Equal Rights Amendment, for example, was very much driven by feminist-backed zines in the 1980s. The “Riot Grrrl” movement in the 1990s brought a combination of feminist and punk attitudes spawning anti-sexism zines like “Bikini Kill” and “Girl Germs” that covered topics typically ignored in women’s magazines.
If this has inspired you to design, edit, and print a tabloid or broadsheet newsletter of your own, it is very easy these days to find templates and guides to help you start quickly and easily. You can also have your printed newsletters delivered inexpensively. Order from just one to a thousand copies of a “real” newspaper at an affordable price thanks to digital printing technology.
