While generally an overdramatic description seldom worthy of it’s casual use, I can say that I experienced a true feeling of “impending doom” last night as I fished out an email from my junk mail box from Punk Planet magazine. There was a time where an email titled “to our subscribers” meant nothing more than an announcment that a glitch at the mail house would delay your issue, or that there was a special renewal notice waiting for you. Now these emails mean only one thing: the demise of a worthy, vital publication.

I opened the email to read what I knew would be an elegy from the publishers. Punk Planet always seemed sure of itself, it had a solidity that was rare in independent publishing, where resources are scarce and time is always a precious commodity. The publicaition itself was always seamless. They represented to me the best in what independent publishing could aspire to: who needed the mainstream media when you had something that was so well-done, so well-written that it didn’t just replace mainstream glossies–it blew them out of the water.

I loved Punk Planet because it knew “punk” was more than just a narrowly-defined music genre. Punk Planet carried on with the substance of punk, knowing that the core values applied to much more than how many zippers your pants had. Punk Planet was strictly substance over style, in an era where what was once “punk” has been stripped of all it’s meaning through overuse, much in the same way that the black shillouette of Che is pretty much visually bankrupt by now. By casting it’s net wide, Punk Planet encompassed overlapping communities of artists, musicians, activists, do-it-yourselfers, many of whom would never describe themselves as being part of the same “scene.”

It is very safe to say that now is the worst time for independent publishing in over a decade. Punk Planet’s email to it’s subscribers, and a chain of articles and warning alarms from them over the last year, make it clear that the domino effect of closures we’re seeing lately is a direct consequence of the Independent Publisher’s Association collapsing in a dismal explosion of debt and mismanagement. (Which is all the more tragic to me, since the people I worked with there were so passionate and competent). The question is, what now? In this post-IPA world where there is no national distribution network for independent print media, will independent print publications become completely extinct?

I don’t think so. My prediction is that independent media is going to nurse it’s wounds on the local level. I think publications like the Hartford Undercurrent are going to continue to thrive, because their base is strong and immediately in their vicinity. As this independent media continues to grow and build support, you’ll see the publications of a couple cities emerge once again on the national level, like Punk Planet did in Chicago, and Clamor did in Bowling Green, Ohio. By then, I beleive that we’ll see the shift away from subscriptions and advertisering money that we already see going on, to new models of sustainability. What kind of models? Well we’re working on it. The Hartford Undercurrent will be hitting the streets shortly as a 100% reader-supported publication. That’s a powerful claim, and a source of hope for me as I wait for the last issue of Punk Planet to arrive in my mailbox with bittersweet anticipation.

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