The Times Online from the UK wrote up an interesting commentary on the importance of fanzines:
Fanzines remain an essential tool to rein in rampant egos and cut out corporate journalism. A British music monthly recently ended a long-running column that regularly flayed sacred cows from Van Morrison to Joy Division ? the publishers reckoned it was affecting their advertising revenue. But a fanzine can be as political as it likes and never be blackmailed by advertisers or press offices.
In a somewhat but not really but kinda related story, Rob Harvilla (you may know him as Arts Editor of Columbus’ The Other Paper) wrote a story for the Houston Press about what’s wrong with music journalism and how to fix it.
It’s a pretty good article, pointing out a lot of the problems that magazines like Rolling Stone and Spin have. But I don’t think there’s a way to fix them. In fact, let them stay broken and beaten, lying in a dark alley like a dog with a broken leg. These things are old. There time has come. Out with the old, in with the new.
They had their chance at evolving and blew it. Now all of us with a few dollars and an internet connection are slowly creeping up on these dinosaurs, and are doing a better job. Because we have true opinions and because we still care about music, not what some label exec thinks about us.