The Zine Underground: Analog Media Never Died

For all the talk about analog media making a comeback, the truth is that it never really went anywhere.

The analog underground has always been alive in many far-flung ways. Before social media, zines thrived across the D.C. metro area– the city’s creative DNA was hand-stitched with flyers, Xerox machines, and well-placed tape. That lineage didn’t disappear when the internet came along.

As analog media resurges back into popular culture, the need and desire for offline communities and a sense of tangibility have surged with it. Where the digital landscape comes with pressures to amass likes, shares, and impressions, zine culture has become a medium where creatives can share their art without the pressure of managing an ongoing social media presence.

A continuous thread

Where digital culture rewards sharability, virality, and a constant turnover of content, zines represent creative intimacy and a growing resistance to the people who profit from our attention. Zines persist because they operate outside the ideology of innovation and mass production. In a world where every image is tagged and optimized, there’s something radical about making something that perhaps only twenty people will ever see, and only if they know where to look. Unlike the algorithm, zines are non-hierarchical; they don’t rely on a hazy idea of what’s trending to be picked up and appreciated. Perfectionism, competition, and speed are core to how we conceptualize and speak about the algorithm itself. Zines– as well as many other forms of DIY media– are the antithesis of perfect, competitive, and fast.

In a time where algorithms are responsible for our daily media consumption, zines have always been a place where dynamism and multimedia are encouraged. In the fifth edition of Capitol Crisis, a popular punk zine in D.C. in the 1980s, they take this idea to heart. “This magazine seems very elitist, but we try to incorporate everything from Punk to Mod, to Electronic, to Motown and Reggae; NOT SIMPLY A PUNK PUBLICATION, by any means (even though our publication is a bit raw, due to limited finances!)” writes Xyra Harper, editor of Capitol Crisis, a fanzine circulated in the D.C. area in the late ‘70s and ‘80s. Some of the bands featured in Capitol Crisis included Black Market Baby, Black Flag, and Joan Jett.

When the medium shapes the meaning

Marshall McLuhan, a Canadian media theorist and philosopher, viewed the medium of communication as the message– that is, the way information is delivered is more important than the information itself. McLuhan’s words land differently in a time when the medium is invisible, intangible, and frictionless. Algorithmic culture not only dictates what we see but also how we express ourselves on various platforms, flattening authentic connection. Algorithms obscure the frame, making content feel interchangeable at times. Instead of becoming lost in digital feeds, the in-person connection of zines revives a slow appreciation of art that today resides in the halls of art galleries, craft fairs, and vintage markets. It’s no coincidence that McLuhan was theorizing media’s effects at the same moment underground presses were proliferating. Perhaps McLuhan was responding to the same thing zines have been tackling for decades: mass media has a homogenizing pull, one analytical and one creative.

Zines, on the other hand, allow for emotional range without translation into a digital-friendly format. Small zine collectives, pop-up fairs, and zine festivals serve as an emotional and creative commons for ideas of all genres. The content within them is meant to be held, read, and then eventually lost or tucked away.

The offline commons

At The George Washington University, WRGW District Radio’s latest branch is Paper Cut, a zine led by Zine Directors Katie Surkin and Sarah Wren Robinson. In their opinion, zine and radio culture have always been deeply connected as a way to bring people together. “We see the zine as a way [for our community] to express and display creativity and talents that isn’t just music-based,” they wrote. “People often think college radio is just for people who like to hear their own voice on air, or people who like to hear their own voice on air, or people who like to show off their music, but that’s not true. In WRGW, college radio is just a collective of cool, creative people who all express themselves in different ways. We have so many different departments, including zine, that really allow everyone to participate in something they’re passionate about and connect with one another.”

Surkin and Robinson are deeply aware of the zine lineage in the region. “Zine culture and radio have always been connected. Both are deeply rooted in DIY and the alternative scene, especially the punk community. It’s all about uplifting the locals and their creativity. I think it’s evolving to be less about the music and more about the community, though. In the same way, [WRGW has] a lot of radio shows that aren’t music based, and we have a lot of zine submissions that aren’t music based either, despite zine’s history in the punk scene. And as fellow punks, we wouldn’t want it any other way! It’s always been about the community and the culture, not just the music,” they wrote.

The zine community is still alive and well in Washington, with DC Zinefest planned for November 1st from 11 am to 4 pm at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library in downtown DC. In the wider region, D.I.Y Fest in Baltimore and Small Press Expo in North Bethesda host workshops for participants and provide an opportunity for the type of community that Surkin and Robinson are creating for GW students.

Continuity, not comeback

Zines never truly disappeared. Instead, they simply adapted, shapeshifting across mediums and generations to meet the moment. What’s resurfacing now on college campuses isn’t a revival so much as a reassertion of something that’s always been there: the instinct to document, connect, and create outside of permission. In a world that increasingly optimizes for sharability, zines remind us of the beauty in opacity, in the small and handmade, in the circulation of stories that don’t need to go viral to matter. The current wave of zine-making isn’t nostalgia, it’s continuity. Each new publication carries the weight of what came before, proving that even in the age of algorithms, the urge to make and share on our own terms is still alive, still urgent, and still ours.