When discussing regional zines, it is necessary to include independent newsletters. Despite their looks and larger print runs, local newsletters carry the same spirit as zines. They are small scale, not for profit, and exist with the sole intention of bringing together a specific community.
Some local examples of these newsletters are the Fairview Town Crier, the Sand Hill School's “Homespun", CLOSER's “Community Connections”, and the Montford Newsletter.
"Email Newsletters are the New Zines", written by Simon Owens on Medium.com gets into some great theory about Zines vs. Newsletters. In this article, he is discussing email newsletters specifically, but the same general thoughts apply here as well.
Members of the LGBT+ community in Asheville formed C.L.O.S.E.R, (Community Liaison Organization for Support, Education, and Reform) in October 1979. The organization was initially sponsored by an agency of the United Way, and founded by a handful of gay men with a desire to meet the needs of the community that were unsatisfied in traditional LGBT+ gathering places like bars. Over time, the C.L.O.S.E.R became a diverse group of individuals meeting to discuss politics, religion and education, but most importantly, to foster relationships in Asheville’s ever-growing LGBT+ community.
CLOSER's "Community Connections" newsletter, later turned newspaper, began as a single page circular in 1989 and ended as a multipage newsprint in 2002. Visit the Buncombe County Special Collections to view a near full collection of Community Connections, as well as more ephemera from the historical LGBTQ+ community in Asheville.
The Sand Hill School released school newsletters primarily reporting on student activities, clubs, teams, and honor roll, but also general articles, poetry, and jokes. A selection of the historical issues have drawings by students. This publication is a great example of the blurred line between newsletter and zine, with its DIY attitude and hodge-podge content.
The Montdford Community Club release monthly newsletters to its club members during the 70s and 80s, and by the end of the 1980s the group was releasing a monthly publication to the entire neighborhood. The newsletter focused on local events, awards, news, and more. The Montford Community Club Newsletters were more focused on objective reporting than other publications mentioned in this exhibition, however the not-for-profit publication simply wished to bring the community together in the way that many zines do as well.
You can submit news to the Montford Newsletter as well as view past issues as far back as 2016 here.
The Fairview Town Crier is a monthly newspaper sent to 9,000 homes in Fariview, Gerton, Fletcher, and Reynolds. It is a free local news source that began in 1997, and functions as a non-profit. This publication is similar to the Montford Newsletter, in that it is objective reporting and has a much larger print run than most zines. This publication brings the greater Fairview Community together based on commonalities specific to region.
You can visit the Fairview Town Crier archive here.
The Asheville Global Report (AGR) was an independently published news source that was published in Asheville and distributed for free every Thursday. The AGR created a forum for the global justice and anti-(corporate)globalization movements.
Originally published at Kinko’s in 1999, AGR went on to publish 436 editions until the final issue in 2007.
"In a short time, we earned ten Project Censored awards and nominations in the Utne Reader for offering the Best International News Coverage in the country. I don't mention those things to boast or mythologize but as a testament of proof for Margaret Mead's advice to "never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world..." And because it is hard for me to imagine anything quite like that organization ever being recreated to that scale and specificity. The AGR was also very much an expression of the zeitgeist we lived in, internationally, nationally, and --particularly-- locally. I have tried to describe what Asheville was like, and everything we did back then to people who weren't around and the responses I get are most often inscrutable and uncomprehending, if not outright disbelief. The culture had changed so radically, so quickly, personally-technologically and in the news media landscape at large, the very idea of a DIY activist news operation such as ours became unthinkable practically overnight." -Eamon Martin
MILES LAMBERSON: When did you start working with AGR? What was the publication like at that point (how big? staff dynamic? funding?)
EAMON MARTIN: I started working for AGR about a month and a half after it debuted (1st issue: 1/18/99). Back then, it was an 8-page fold-out newsletter format. There were three editors, Brendan Conley (the founder), Clare Hanrahan and Robert Brown. And that was everyone. Clare left shortly after it began and I took her place. It didn't cost that much on that scale. We all chipped in. A few months later, we expanded to newsprint and began selling advertisements and subscriptions. We became a 501(c)(3) and started collecting donations and then what became a never-ending carousel of fundraisers and benefits.
ML: What’s the story behind your involvement with AGR? How’d you come upon it? How’d you get involved?
EM: I moved to Asheville on the day the first issue hit the streets. I'd just returned to the states from working at Radio For Peace International in Costa Rica and had a specific plan to start a newspaper. I was very much the post-undergrad campus radical hopped up on Manufacturing Consent, Ben Bagdikian and all of the terrible things I'd come to learn about US/CIA military interventionism. Oddly enough, there was the AGR, and they even had a news brief about the radio program I'd created at RFPI. Brendan worked at the French Broad Food Co-op, where I also got a job. True serendipity.
ML: What did you expect when you began editing AGR? How are those expectations different or similar to what actually happened?
EM: I don't think anyone had any expectations. We were making it up as we went along. We were just some people who knew a few things about US government --and specifically foreign policy-- who were dismayed about the profound degree to which the public was underinformed about matters concerning human rights, and social and environmental justice, and we decided to take direct action and do something about it, which we viewed as nothing less than a crisis. Also, it wasn't just us. Our crew was very much a part and expression of a larger social movement at the time, and a scene that went far beyond our own contributions. There was a genuine counterculture, loosely what became known as the "global justice" or "anti(corporate)-globalization" movement. And it was a sizeable coalition of grassroots efforts. It was cohesive. And we were in the middle of it, making the most of the newfound possibilities that the internet provided for social organizing, and creating community, living with dignity and having fun while we did it.
ML: Did you have an interest or any experience in DIY Publications/zinemaking before you came into AGR? Would you personally even consider AGR a zine?
EM: I didn't have any experience with that. Brendan maybe did. But we were both of the DIY activist/punk scene. Schooled by Jello Biafra and Dischord records. We would routinely participate in zine conferences and sometimes conduct DIY independent media workshops. We always did what we could to encourage and help others start their own projects whenever we could.
ML: Were there any other independent publications circulating in Asheville/the South that you knew of when you were working on AGR? How did AGR compare?
EM: There wasn't a heck of a lot in the South from what I remember. The Triangle Free Press took up our model and ran with it for long after we stopped, I believe. I can't speak to the zine culture. I was more focused on finding out about national/world events which were very time-consuming.
ML: You were around for the switch to entirely digital Asheville Global Report, how did that feel for you - to see something that so many people had put so much time and energy into completely shifting? I can imagine a lot of folks left the organization, with their attachments to print media as opposed to TV or Radio. How did the group change after the end of the newspaper?
EM: How did that feel for me? It was very painful, and still is. The end of the newspaper was very much both a literal and symbolic end of an era, not just for our operation but for our immediate community, and the broader civil society movements to which we were aligned. It didn't end well, and I take the blame for that. It was no longer sustainable, the way things had been, the amount of time, energy and money needed to pull it off. We had a $60K annual budget, postage was increasing, newsprint was becoming more costly and antiquated every day. We simply couldn't afford to keep it going that way, for many other reasons also which are too numerous to get into here. The TV and radio shows were practically no budget at all to run. And the TV show was getting broadcast nationwide on Free Speech TV alongside Democracy Now so, it made practical sense. A lot of people were upset and rightly so. The AGR newspaper was an organizing hub in the community. It was a visible manifestation on the streets and in the cafes, shops, stores and bars representing a strain of social conscience, conversation and community ethic that was not the same as turning on the TV or radio shows, which were comparably more siloed and alienated projects, and only involved skeleton production crews. The newspaper folded practically at the precise moment in which a seismic wave of gentrification hit the city, and just ahead of Barack Obama becoming president. By that time, even though we carried on with the programs for another few years, it was really all over. Asheville had lost a piece of its identity, and so did I. It messed me up, honestly. I mourn for those years.