Media of the sub-culture. From the history of German alternative press since ’68 Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich entfällt? ? B.N. 1 What is ‘alternative press’? 2 Structural characteristics 3 Market laws 4 Functional types 5 Development lines 6 Alternative press in the German-speaking countries 6.1 Germany 6.2 Austria 6.3 Switzerland 7 Language 7.1 The scene’s jargon 7.2 Anglo-German 7.3 Text, picture, layout 8 Perspectives 9 References 1 What is ‘alternative press’? What is ‘alternative press’? What precisely do we mean by a label, which conjures up a different image for almost everybody? There is absolutely no shortage of suggestions on the precise meaning of the term (compiled, e.g., by Dorer 1995: 330). The ambiguity of the many definitions has allowed the contours - if in fact there were any at one time - to become so blurred that some people, recalling an early advice of Otfried Jarren (1984), feel we’re better off avoiding a definition completely. Incidentally, Jarren himself fails to follow his own advice consistently: he attributes new nuances to the term when he paraphrases it by expressions such as “marginal press”, “movement media”, “new outlook press”, also “sub-local publishing”, or simply “new print media” (Jarren 1992: 71ff.). Others working in this field also like to speak - not without emphasis now and then - of the “autonomous” media (Pöttiger 1992), in any case “noncommercial” (Dorer 1995), “lay journalism” (Fabris 1979), and “basis publishing” (Pöttger 1992), thus the “grassroots” (Pöttger 1992), “subculture press” (Schwendter 1992), or “underground press” (Hess-Lüttich 1976), the “counterculture” (Stamm 1988), and the somehow “other” media (Weichler 1987). The Handbuch der Massenkommunikation records under Claus Eurich’s entry for “Alternative Publishing” the enlightening information that it is a form of “lay publishing” seeking “Alternativen zum existierenden Angebot an Massenkommunikation, vor allem im Hinblick auf den überschaubaren lokalen Raum, zu entwickeln und [zu] erproben <to develop and test alternatives to the existing media, especially regarding the local area, striving for political participation, and promoting alternative lifestyles>” (Koszyk & Pruys 1981: 11). The genre is mostly linked with the “new social movements” of the 1970s. However, “Unschärfen in der Bezeichnung sozialer Bewegungen entspricht im wissenschaftlichen K O D I K A S / C O D E Ars Semeiotica Volume 29 (2006) No. 4 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 352 Bereich eine Verunsicherung sowohl bei der Begründung des Erkenntnisinteresses als auch bezüglich der Bestimmung und Abgrenzung von Forschungsgegenständen des Alternativbereichs <vagueness in referring to social movements corresponds to uncertainty […] in precisely defining the object within the alternative sector>” (Beywl & Brombach 1982: 565; cf. Weichler 1987: 8ff.). Because the subject at hand is by definition a transitory phenomenon, it cannot be easily described in terms of scientific categories and schematic rules applied by observers from outside the movements. Descriptions “from within”, by ‘alternative’ publishers or committed ‘scene’ sociologists, on the other hand, often lack the necessary objectivity (or detachment from their subject) or exaggerate its socio-political potential (cf. Weichler 1987: 155). A preliminary working definition of ‘alternative press’ should consider the self-image of those affected as well as cultural, structural, functional, economic, political, genetic, and semiotic aspects. Such a definition should be based on communication theory and media empiricism, the proper place of the alternative press within its social context pinpointed, and it should be defined by the relationship between subculture and mainstream culture, power and antipower, movement and target of protest, general public and counter-culture, community and outsider. It should verify the degree of independence from parties, institutions, and associations, and apply criteria of the degree of political awareness and the spectrum of topics specific to subcultures. It should indicate the historical development and future outlook within a changing media system. It should analyse the potential contradiction between alternative identity and economic structures and classify the various types in terms of form and function. It should describe the unorthodox semiotic and linguistic structures of ‘alternative’ media with respect to all the codes they involve. Is there a concept which satisfies all these criteria? As far as I can see: no. But a few areas of study can already be marked out in rough sketch, derived from simple questions for which there still are no final answers: What is ‘alternative’ press? What does it want? How is it made? How does it function? What does it look like? Where did it come from? Where does it want to go? That is to say: what are its structural characteristics, market laws, functional types, and lines of development, its current status in the German-language area, its special language features? 2 Structural characteristics ‘The’ alternative press does not exist no more than does ‘the’ teenage slang. It is just a handy way to make unfamiliar and confusing terrain intellectually available. Statistics only give us the bare facts (Drobil 1993; Dorer 1995): the size (30 pages on average, but ranging from flier to book); the price (fairly low because customers’ budgets are modest); circulation (also modest, usually below 3,000, but a few mass-circulation papers distort the picture, raising it to an average of 5,000 to 7,000 readers); publication frequency (varies greatly, the mean lies at seven issues per year); publication sites (changing frequently, mainly in large cities); advertising (mainly small classifieds for contact between readers and writers); editorial staff (usually less than five full-time people, perhaps backed up by a few part-time aides). Self-descriptive statements of editors proclaim ‘alternative’ press to be the antithesis of the Establishment, the polar opposite to bourgeois values in every respect: it is non-commercial, not impartial, not objective, not rational, not conventional, not broadly informative, not representative, not hierarchical, and shuns the division of labor. It challenges the power of Media of the sub-culture 353 monopolies of opinion. It dares to be an alternative market opposing the one monopolized by information conglomerates. The subject is always departure from the norm, radical change, and, as if for the first time, new autonomy, new authenticity, and self-determination in the face of outside domination. Et cetera. Such descriptions still tend to be trumpeted in the bombastic tone of 1968 fanfare, recalling the origin of the genre. Yet yesterday’s generation of veterans of the movement has mellowed, and today’s youth sees things in an idealized light, or simply as passé. The medium has developed its own norms, anti-norms that is, of unconventional behavior. They not only manifest themselves in happily breaking the rules of German spelling and punctuation - especially when their validity had not yet been relativized by reforms or by automatic “spell-check” and hyphenation programs in word-processing software to rob them of their shock effect (this type of rule-breaking has recently taken a bit of the élan out of the épater le bourgeois). They also delight in overcoming habits of publication planning or pressures of economic mechanisms, of punctual regularity or uniformity of publishing site (for instance, according to its masthead, D ER GRÜNE Z WEIG appeared “jeden Newmond in Highdelberg”; John Wilcock edited his O THER S CENES wherever he happened to be, and he changed his living quarters frequently). What makes the genre ‘alternative’ can be characterized by two bundles of categories, those of mass media role relationships and those of professional organization. It wants to abolish the classic division of sender and receiver roles, to break up the one-sided stream of information from news seller to news consumer (“unilinearity between producer and recipient”), to transform the “distribution apparatus” into a “communication apparatus” (Beywl & Brombach 1982). At the beginning of the 1930s, Bertolt Brecht is known to have already preformulated this for the radio, which struck him as the “denkbar großartigste Kommunikationsapparat <most tremendous communications apparatus imaginable>” to the extent that it would be capable “nicht nur auszusenden, sondern auch zu empfangen, also den Zuhörer nicht nur hören, sondern auch sprechen zu machen und ihn nicht zu isolieren, sondern ihn in Beziehung zu setzen <not only of transmitting but also of receiving, so that listeners would not only hear but also be able to speak, to break out of their isolation and play an active role>” (Brecht 1967: 134). This still seems to be the program, and the authorities quoted by the theoreticians of the genre have remained largely the same for thirty years: Walter Benjamin (Der Autor als Produzent), Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer (Kulturindustrie), Hans Magnus Enzensberger (Baukasten zu einer Theorie der Medien), Jürgen Habermas (Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit), Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge (Öffentlichkeit und Erfahrung. Zur Organisation von bürgerlicher und proletarischer Öffentlichkeit). “Betroffene sprechen, schreiben, fotografieren, malen, singen, spielen für Betroffene <those affected speak, write, photograph, paint, sing, and play for those affected>”, reported one of the first MA-theses on the topic emphatically (Röder 1978: 165): “anstelle der üblichen Sender-Empfänger-Entfremdung treten die Rezipienten mittels des Mediums miteinander in Kontakt <instead of the usual sender-receiver alienation, receivers come in contact with each other by means of the medium>.” “Those affected” were to be reported on “authentically” (Beywl & Brombach 1982: 559), not as objects of reportage, but as subjects (Weichler 1978: 100f.). Without filter or censorship, immediate and from the “I” perspective, their words are to be provided an audience. This shows the “true reality” of which many speak with naïve conviction (Weichler 1987: 76), as if the alternative media reality were not another construction (or reconstruction) of reality but reality itself. In contrast to the Estab- Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 354 lishment press, the alternative is partisan and subjective (Dorer 1993: 38); it firmly holds to its ideals: “Gegenöffentlichkeit, Solidarität, Partizipation und Aufhebung der Trennung zwischen Politik und Alltagspraxis, auch um den Preis der ‘Selbstausbeutung’ <counterculture, solidarity, participation, and lifting the division between politics and everyday practice, even at the price of ‘self-exploitation’>” (Dorer 1995: 328; cf. id. 1992). These ideals correspond to those of an alternative professionalism which strives to organize journalistic publishing based on democracy, participation, and equality. This, however, does not lessen the workload, it merely takes longer. Which again may cause the sense of frustration and feeling of ‘self-exploitation’ mentioned above among many of the selflessly committed publishers. Their production process is usually a rotation process, the politically correct course of which is not supposed to be inhibited by elements such as specialization, hierarchies, allocation of resources, definition of departments, acquisition, budgeting, etc. Occasionally, the realities of everyday practice conflict with the ideals of the alternative program. Discussion between participants on news issues is then enriched by rather dry topics such as balance sheets, printing deadlines, capacity, circulation volume, sales figures, machinery costs, etc. This frequently intensifies to a basic conflict between utopia and economics, between commitment and routine, emotion and technique, partisanship and objectivity, “the stomach and the head”. Which usually leads to a splintering of the editorial crew and to mutual criticism of obstinate grimness (at the price of irrelevance) or to a sell-out of ideals (at the price of adaptation to the mainstream). Market laws then take hold. A few fold. A few return to Square One. Some join the Establishment press. 3 Market laws One doesn’t know for sure, but it can be assumed that the rules of the media market also apply in the alternative sector. As for the economics of the alternative press, there has hardly been a reliable study on this, let alone a representative one. Nonetheless, some figures have become available from Austria, from which conclusions about the situation in the Germanlanguage area can be drawn (Dorer 1995). According to this survey (the results of which are briefly summarized in the following), the market is expanding despite substantial financial risks - above all for the publishing team involved, whose commitment is seldom rewarded appropriately. In most projects (two thirds of the cases), regularly paid positions are not even planned. Only about a third have a part-time employee. As a rule, fees aren’t paid either (only 4.5% of the newspapers regularly pay writers for their work). Budgets usually offer no room for investment in infrastructure. One looks for a little help from one’s friends and searches elsewhere to share printers or photocopying machines paid by others, working in private space, falling back on computers or means of transport belonging to others. Costs have to remain low because net income from sales (17%), from donations or contributions from umbrella donor organizations (32%), from advertising (15%), from subsidies and solidarity events are rather low, too, hardly sufficing to pay printing costs. There is no leeway for cost categories such as product sales, advertising, personnel, fees, insurance, technology, rental space, research, and continuing education. Meanwhile, the business service provided on this basis (to say nothing at all about the cultural side) is not inconsiderable. Jeff Bernard (1990: 259f.) once estimated annual productivity of no less than ÖS 700 million [approx. 50 million ¤ or 25 million $] for the Austrian Media of the sub-culture 355 autonomous cultural sector. According to the model projection of Dorer (1995: 338) for the alternative press market, this still amounts to an annual performance of ÖS 384 million produced free-of-charge. 1 In this way, the alternative-press market segment makes its modest contribution to the commercial media market, in the shadows of which it makes some progress or more often just seeks to survive - thereby still lending life and color to the scene. 4 Functional types The spectrum of the alternative press could in fact hardly be more colorful. After taking stock in the mid-1980s (Hess-Lüttich 1987: 32ff.; Weichler 1987: 10ff.), it extended in Germany from city district newspapers (such as K OMM in Nuremberg) to city magazines (such as Z ITTY in Berlin), village and provincial papers (such as D ER HESSISCHE L ANDBOTE , T RAUM - A-L AND from Franken-Hohenlohe) and on to the daily newspaper (T AZ , Berlin) or weekly newspaper (W O Z, Zurich); from peace, environmental, and theory periodicals (such as D ICKE L UFT , Berlin) on to political, counter-culture, and anarchy papers (such as H EINZELPRESS , B ASIS , T RAUMSTADT ) to all kinds of health, therapy, education, and inspirational papers; from periodicals for alternative healthcare practitioners (D R . MED . M ABUSE ), alternative economists and alternative experts of any persuasion on to special issues for esoteric types, parapsychologists, and spiritualists (such as M IDDLE E ARTH , Frankfurt a.M.) all the way to those of countless sects (S ANGHA , Berlin), of believers and the God-fearing, regardless of which denomination; from periodicals for social pedagogy and antipedagogy (J UPI , Frankfurt) and Third World or Fourth Dimension, reports for retirees (R ENTNER R EPORT , Cologne), the unemployed (M OTZ , Berlin), youth (Y EAH , Zurich), unemployed youth, backpackers, punks, skinheads, and ravers, to journals especially for women or men - or those in between (C OURAGE , Berlin; S PINATWACHTEL , Heidelberg; S IEGESSÄULE , Berlin; F IRST , later Q UEER , Cologne). There is no lack of proposals to classify this confused variety by typology or function. Obviously a more or less unified line cannot be recognized anywhere. What may apply as prototypically alternative for one, is seen by another as already having swum in the mainstream for a long time. One adds on whatever is somehow ‘different’, while the other grades strictly in accord with more politically correct ‘nomenklatura’. In this sense, the fan magazines of the skinheads are not alternative, but simply fascist (Schwendter 1992). Throwing everything into the alternative melting pot waters down the flavor: what exactly do T AZ , tao, tantra, techno, transvestites, and theosophical periodicals have in common (except the homoeopropheron, of course)? The very first index of the Bonn-based Arbeitsgruppe Alternativpresse (AgAp) already sorts its lists by categories with divisions and limitations which permit pointed argument. Weichler (1987: 10) took this as a basis and sorted the mass of material into 18 subgroups. Under these headings one finds (or fails to find) anything from “Stad(t)zeitungen” [sic] (city newspapers) to “exotica and improperly classified papers” all the way to “linksliberaldemokratischalternativen Wochenzeitungen [sic] <leftist liberal democratic alternative weekly newspapers>”. Ever-recurring typological categories of alternative press products include regional circulation, primary readership, and thematic priority (Beywl & Brombach 1982). Winter & Eckert (1990: 38-40) operate with parameters such as ‘local’ versus ‘trans-local’. Locally circulated press products are ‘city papers’ and ‘initiative newspapers’ (concerning citizen initiatives, local interest groups, affected and self-help groups), Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 356 a transregional press addresses certain social minorities, subcultures, and disadvantaged groups or is dedicated to special topics such as antimilitarism, the Third World, or alternative nutrition. Local thematic papers, also covering those aimed at specific target groups, are most heavily represented on these lists, with more than 50%. ‘People’s papers’ include the D ORTMUNDER K LÜNGELKERL or the K ÖLNER V OLKSBLATT (which see themselves as voices of grassroots organizations and citizen initiatives), ‘city papers’ (such as the A ACHENER V OLKSHETZE , D E S CHNÜSS in Bonn, or formerly the legendary P FLASTERSTRAND in Frankfurt, which offered information from diverse city subculture scenes and provided links between their contacts), and ‘city magazines’ (such as the Cologne S TADTREVUE , the Hamburg S ZENE , the Berlin T IP , and the Munich B LATT with extensive cultural calenders, feature articles, and classified ads on high-gloss or recycled paper and with a well ‘established’ image). In Switzerland, incidentally, this type of city magazine only emerged once briefly and then disappeared quickly from the market. There are leftover exceptions such as Z ÜRI -T IP , which had been edited originally as a city paper by the alternative T ELL and now survives as a weekly insert in the T AGESANZEIGER (Bortlik 1992: 58). Such typological classifications must be updated continuously, since they can only represent the status at any moment in a constantly changing market. The lists cited omit mention of the fan magazines (or ‘fanzines’), publications by and for fans of all sorts of idolized types, the punk fanzines (Lau 1992), those appealing to fans of horror “splatter” films (Winter 1995), those of the ravers (Androutsopoulos 1998), or hardcore gays (La Bruce 1995). Even if they are also published semiprofessionally, they belong to the alternative printing market: the barriers between readers and writers are low, one belongs to the same subculture and enjoys the exchange of fanzines among friends and confidantes “just for fun” (Liebminger 1990: 225). For every need there are suitable gazettes. The functional variety can hardly be recorded under the current typologies. The spectrum of topics is broad and changing constantly. At the centre stand aspects of life within the various subcultures: the musical, political, social, religious, occult, spiritual, sexual, and psychological-psychodelic special interests of scenes which may be already history or have long since changed or evaporated just when scientists (media, social, text, or cultural) have named, described, and sorted them into separate drawers, affixed labels on them, and entered them under permanent categories. 5 Development lines The death of the alternative press has been certified more than once (Stamm 1994). Each symptom of its disintegration has been registered with melancholy and its absorption by a liberal pluralistic society noted (Weichler 1987). Its displacement by ‘new media’ has been diagnosed, as has its decline in the tough competition of the media market. In view of the patient’s vigorous health, such diagnoses appear a bit premature. Perhaps they are partially a generational problem of the ‘scene’ researchers. They themselves may be an outgrowth of alternative student days in a political or protest setting. Now they must recognize that their scenes have indeed declined and given way to new youth scenes to which ‘authentic’ access has long since been denied them. This makes their ‘participatory’ observation no easier. Media of the sub-culture 357 The trends of alternative media tend to show promise. The market is expanding, and the inventory in the periodically published “Verzeichnisse der AlternativMedien” is ever more extensive. The ID Archives [“Informationsdienst zur Verbreitung unterbliebener Nachrichten” <info service for the distribution of suppressed news>], today assigned to the Amsterdam Institute for Social History, now contains the most complete documentation on the German alternative press and thus continues the regular reappraisal which the Bonn-based AgAp began at the outset of the 1980s. These surveys (not free of methodological shortcomings at the beginning) testify to a continuous increase in titles which have more than quadrupled within two decades (Dorsch-Jungsberger 1982; Dorer 1995: 334). In 1981, the AgAp listed exactly 439 titles, more than 60% of which had survived more than three years and had circulations of 2,600 on average. In total, this amounted to 1.6 million copies. In 1986, it was about 600 titles, in 1989 already more than 1,000 (cf. Weichler 1987: 162). In 1991, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany, the ID Archives indicated 1,250 titles in the “old” federal states and knew of about 70 others appearing in the new federal states (Dorer 1995: 333). The newly advertised issue is supposed to record the market’s status even more precisely, which has delayed its appearance time after time. In the periodical D IE B EUTE - P OLITIK UND V ERBRECHEN , published by the ID Archives, an article appears regularly in the “Unterm Ladentisch” column on alternative journals of every shading, e.g., on “immigrant periodicals” (spring 1994, 127-129), “anarchistic periodicals” (fall 1994, 129-133), “punk and hardcore fanzines” (winter 1994-1995, 126-130), “art fanzines” (spring 1995, 114-123), “literature periodicals” (fall 1995, 122-129), “technoculture” (summer 1995, 118-123), “feminist periodicals” (winter 1995-1996, 114-125), “football fanzines” (spring 1996, 108-115). Press statistics for noncommercial newspapers in Austria record similar developments (Dorer, Marschik & Glattau 1992) with more than 350 titles, and proudly note, measured in per capita terms, “eine dreimal so große Titelvielfalt und Zeitschriftendichte wie Deutschland <three times the variety of titles and density of periodicals as in Germany>” (Dorer 1995: 334). Hence the phenomenon has naturally been present for some time. But at what point in time should a history of the alternative press (which is missing to date) meaningfully begin? With the pamphlets of the Reformers in the 15 th and 16 th centuries (Schwitalla 1983)? Or with the broadsheets of the labor movement at the end of the 19th century? In any case, the connection between social movements and alternative press records is emphasized without exception. In Germany, however, one usually begins with the student movement at the end of the 1960s and the “new social movements” following them at the outset of the 1970s (Stamm 1988; Weichler 1987). The theoretical impulses triggered by these movements - based on the theses of Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Oskar Negt, and Alexander Kluge (see above) - indisputably inspired the “Strategie der Herstellung von Öffentlichkeit <strategy of bringing about openness>” (Negt). This occurred as a strategy against the monopoly of opinion by the established press, which was simultaneously labeled or libeled as an instrument of social control. Thus a part of alternative media production was directly or indirectly motivated by the Establishment. Stamm (1988: 53) interprets this period as the “Konstitutionsphase von Gegenöffentlichkeit, deren Gehalt nicht so sehr in der Ausprägung materialisierter Gegenöffentlichkeit gelegen hat, als in der Formulierung einer utopischen Idee authentischer Gegenöffentlichkeit <constitutional phase of counter-public, whose main impact lay […] in formulating a utopian idea of an authentic counter-public>”. The ‘objectivity’ presumed in the established media which serves as an Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 358 instrument of ‘manipulation’ or even ‘repression’ (Enzensberger 1970: 173) can only be met effectively with the postulate of radical subjectivity (Stamm 1988: 107). The effective influence of the Frankfurt school of social sciences should in no way be belittled here. But whether the analytical power of its argument in the rather academic framework of critical cultural and media studies has brought about such consequences in unfolding this rich offering of alternative media, may still be in justified doubt. The intellectual-political situation overall - not just in Germany - would have to be taken into account in a more precise historical analysis. Even at the outset of the 1970s, if the student movement had not dissolved, it had fanned out visibly and divided into separate disciplines, differentiating itself into ‘scenes’ and splitting into subcultures, until it reached far into the nonstudent population, if it was not already on the “Marsch durch die Institutionen <way through the institutions>”. Protest movements emerged and marched not only at Easter but for peace and against environmental disaster. Nuclear opponents demonstrated against atomic power. Women formed themselves into a ‘power’ movement, as did spontaneous protesters (Spontis) or psychosects. Youth celebrated its ‘love-ins’ as happily as the “Gay Liberation Front” did its ‘Coming-Outs’ (Cologne 1972). The “Tune in - Turn on - Drop out” messages of drug prophets such as Timothy Leary led to the radical demand of graffiti sprayed on every wall: “Legalize Erdbeereis! <strawberry icecream>.” The counter-society of youths ‘underground’ moved troublingly into the nightly images of television news, and viewers or illustrated magazine readers promptly lost an overview of the subcultures presented to them: “the Hippies, Yippies, and Diggers, the Mods, Rockers, Hell’s Angels, heavy metal freaks, the Skinheads, Teddy-boys, Greasers, Crombies, Kabouters, and Communards, the Müslis, Spontis, Rollers, Rastafarians, Ravers, Rockabillies, the Parkers, Provos, Punks, and Poppers …” (Hess-Lüttich 1987: 29f.). All these “new social movements” with the diffuse labels described scenes rather summarily. Even without having studied Adorno’s learned analyses in detail, they expressed their identity within the group and against the others, using the signs of their own styles but also the language of their own media: What makes a style is the activity of stylisation - the active organisation of objects with activities and outlooks, which produce an organised group identity in the form and shape of a coherent and distinctive way of “being in the world” (Widdicombe & Wooffitt 1995: 17). The language already delivers a reference to the models - the beginning of the USA ‘underground press’ which emerged in the 1960s - of young, rebellious poets lacking respect such as Bukowski, Burroughs, Fiedler, Ginsburg, Holmes, Kerouac, O’Hara, and Ferlinghetti (Hess-Lüttich 1976). By the end of the decade, more than 500 papers with a total circulation of more than 2.5 million copies were already coordinated in the two largest American organizations of subcultural press, the Liberation News Service and the Underground Press Syndicate. They reached more than 8 million readers and circulated in the subcultures of the 1960s. A bit later the number doubled and established itself as the “alternative press” which also served the Beatniks, Yippies, Hippies, Junkies, etc. as an expression of their cultural and sub-cultural identity as well as a forum of their media policy criticism, a criticism later quoted and intensified in Europe: the Establishment press provided no space for minorities, or it orchestrated them for sensational and voyeuristic effects. It filtered news in unreliable ways according to the likes and interest of the ‘ruling’ culture or morality while denying freedom of art and self-expression (Weichler 1987: 141). Media of the sub-culture 359 By contrast, the alternative press had the social function to solidify and inform the “various groups on a local, regional, national, and international basis […] on the status and events of the movement”, to provide orientation on life in the subculture and survival in society, to discuss perspectives of the ‘counter society’, to publish whatever the others - the integrated, established, and commercialized media - suppressed (Hollstein 1980: 21f.). In the meantime, drawing the boundaries so sharply is, in all cases, no longer as easy as it used to be. Youth newspapers and city magazines, the pop press, and even the political house organs of the parties, unions, churches, and sects usually promote themselves as ‘alternatives’, a label once considered incompatible with ties to parties or political associations (Beywl 1982: 25; Weichler 1978: 148; Stamm 1988: 104). Yet they have long since submitted to market standards of language, layout, and design, to which the conventions of unconventionality also belong - in any case as long as they count and make a profit. If church papers are counted among the ‘established’ part of the alternative press as are the Berlin T AZ or the H AMBURGER R UNDSCHAU (Dorer 1995: 331), if prominent critics publish their high-gloss columns in T IP , and if countless special-interest newspapers are produced professionally for minorities with special interests, this reveals the dilemma of nonchalant classifying practices in a rapidly changing media sector. This sector also faces increasing competition from ‘alternative new media’ which join the print and radio media (for alternative radio, see Dorer 1993) and video projects (Vogelsang 1991). In the ‘E-zines’ or ‘Cyberzines’, text conventions will break out multimedially and in the near future perhaps revolutionize alternative ‘press’ in the virtual reality of networked computer worlds. 6 Alternative press in the German-speaking countries 6.1 Germany The data may vary, depending on the source, but the alternative media sector as a whole in Germany - despite all the inner change and domestic differentiation - proved to be astoundingly stable since the beginning of the 1970s. 2 The first agencies and archives were founded to coordinate operations and to oversee the variety of papers and to collect them (AgAp, Bonn; ID, Frankfurt a.M.; Papiertiger, Berlin). Between 1975 and 1985, a boom in alternative culture publications occurred with lower circulations and often only local distribution. Anyone who felt called upon to write found a forum. Amateur journalists exposed “suppressed news” to the public. Amateur authors sought to immortalize themselves in alternative literary journals such as the U LCUS M OLLE I NFO edited by Josef Wintjes for “Dutzende und Aberdutzende von Lesern im gesamten Bundesgebiet! ! ! <dozens and dozens of readers across the entire Federal Republic! ! ! >” (1-3/ 1984, Bottrop) - at least for a short while. Since the mid-1980s, ever more content from the alternative papers has found its way into the broad mainstream media. This can be evaluated as a partial loss of the alternative press’s function. But it can also be seen as an expression of perceived change in society. Thus an array of tendencies are running parallel with which a part of the alternative press pushes ever more intensively toward the Establishment while, at the same time, new products are blossoming once more. Among these tendencies are professionalism (from the snippet look to text design, from fliers to complete column offerings, from self-awareness groups to editing teams with beats and professional research). The trends also include market orientation with simultaneous functional shifts (from self-help house organs to target group products, from Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 360 city district info sheet to metropolitan magazine, from flea-market advertiser to bid-notice paper for medium-size companies, from contact impulse providers to service firms with “full media service”). Finally, the surge promotes political pluralising (from agitprop posts to discussion forums), expansion of cultural perspectives (from subcultures and off-off cultures on the total spectrum offered), and diversification (from information on marginal groups to the plurality of special-interest magazines). In this way, the former green alternative daily T AZ has the same total offering today as other daily newspapers. The now very stylish J OURNAL F RANKFURT has emerged from the former politically committed “sponti” city newspaper of Frankfurt’s “undogmatic left” P FLASTERSTRAND , which was founded in 1976 by some 18 authors such as Daniel Cohn- Bendit and Joschka Fischer, who later became successful politicians (in 1998, Fischer was elected German Minister of Foreign Affairs and Vice-Chancellor, Cohn-Bendit is a member of the European Parliament in Brussels and hosts a Swiss TV show on literature). At the same time, the commercial media are progressively less concerned with profiting from the same sources the subcultural ones make use of. Off-culture in the feature sections is presented in the same detail as the latest offer on the psychology market or the esoteric branch in the ‘modern living’ column or even backpacker tips for travel freaks in the travel supplement. News from the fetish front and even from the sadomasochism dungeons were still reserved in the mid-1980s in thin, photocopied insider booklets from desktop publishing shops. Today, they are carried on the market in Yellow Press advice columns just as on the countless talk shows of radio and TV. Liberal and conservative newspapers portray their ‘scene’ pages with the slight itch of the unfamiliar which animates the middle-class clientele to contented headshaking in selfassurance of their normality. Meanwhile, each former subculture scene from techno to tattoo is served by commercial presses with their own periodicals. Advertising takes over the signs. The like-minded of every shade find each other through the classifieds. Daily newspapers, city magazines, and events calendars compete for the regional classifieds market which remained firmly in alternative hands until the mid-1980s. All these periodicals (such as Berlin’s T IP or Z WEITE H AND ) have been bought by major publishers and have gone also on the Net to offer their complete “full multimedia service”. It clearly requires a certain resistance to withstand the market undertow. Especially political papers at the leftand right-wing fringes (such as R ADIKAL , P RAWDA , or W IKING ) are far less marketable than the hedonistic target groups’ papers. But there are politically lessdefined periodicals such as the Aachen B IERFRONT or Berlin’s V M AX , the “Zeitung auf der Überholspur” from the “Verein zur Gangbarmachung kultureller Abwege <association for the remediation of deviating paths of culture>” which stated its position precisely in its first issue’s editorial (undated, about 1988) “Wir sind irre! Irre auf Hofgang. Wir machen euch den Hof. Wir sind Hofnarren […] Wir spielen für niemand Op-Position, denn jede Position kann uns gestohlen bleiben <We are lunatics! Crazy about strolls in the jail courtyard . We want to court you. We are court jesters […] We don’t play the op-position for anybody, because positions don’t matter to us>”. These papers remain protected from the media companies’ grasp and appear now as then in the slick offset and collage forms of any small publishers who used to meet annually in Frankfurt at the Alternative Book Fair. The Cologne Popcom Fair publishes a catalogue of the smallest periodicals which close “die Lücke zwischen Hochglanzmagazin und Schülerzeitung <the gap between glossy magazines and student papers>” (Neidhart 1995). They had been invented in the early 1980s by California surfers and skaters and classified under the collective term ‘Fanzines’. The Media of the sub-culture 361 manifesto assigned to the fanzine index (“Fanzines: the independent way”) sounds like an echo of the journalistic subcultures’ earlier alternative programmes. Fanzines didn’t exist to make a profit but to express private tastes. The idea isn’t just to pay tribute to trends but to provide a forum for personal interests. The spectrum is wide: press runs range between 100 and 5,000 copies which appear once or as monthly, quarterly, or irregular journals at a price between DM 2 and 10. They may be professionally set by computer on coloured or gloss paper, or just be hand-written, copied, and stuck together with no demand on logical structure or transparent layout (for recent developments see the chapters by Androutsopoulos, Nicolaus, Reiffer, and Zobl in Neumann ed. 1999). No subject is taboo. On the contrary, if the daily press stonewalls against reporting on a German gay-pride parade of 100,000 homosexuals on “Christopher Street Day”, instead covering a meeting of a dozen members of a local rifle club, that becomes a political exposé. What established papers ‘overlook’ awakens the fanzines’ curiosity. Subjects “from the underground” are their forte. “Contact at the grass-roots” is a condition for coverage in the “independent area”. According to its masthead, D ER INNERE S CHWEINEHUND from Erlensee is an “unabhängiges Magazin für die Endphase des gesellschaftlichen Niedergangs <independent magazine for the final phase of society’s decline>” which tackles fringe topics. The editorial staff itself says that its feature section may even base reviews on “‘n leeren Joghurtbecher <an empty yoghurt cup>”, while the Hamburg women’s paper P LANET P USSY dedicates itself to the hard life of soccer spouses (“Tu ihn rein, Lothar <Put it in, Lothar>”), and the Soltendieck magazine S.U.B.H. deciphers the compelling link between punk and world revolution (Neidhart 1995). The Aachen B IERFRONT (subtitle of January 1988 issue: “alles was Trinkern Spaß macht <everything that drinkers consider fun>”) calls for a German- Belgian-Dutch drinking contest. The Hamburg magazine N EID is the “einzige, wo Männer wirklich unterdrückt werden <only one in which men are really suppressed>”. And “kein Magazin der Welt informiert so ausführlich über Rap und Breakdance <no magazine in the world reports in such detail on rap and breakdance>” as the Leverkusen hip-hop magazine M ZEE . The style in which the music fanzines report on their scene varies as much as the style of music directions which they represent. Thus Sven Gormsen still writes rather tamely in an editorial in the Tübingen L AUTT (0/ 1982), but with an offsetting surge of courage at the spelling level: Wir haben zwar kein gestörtes Verhältnis zu den Größen der Pop-Musik und wollen keineswegs ländliche Idylle und Hausmacherproduktionen zum Ideal stilisieren. Wir glauben aber, daß die großen Namen in der bestehenden Musik-Presse ausreichend oft abgedruckt werden […] Wir sind deshalb bei L AUTT eher geneigt, weniger beachteten Veranstaltungen unser interesse zu schenken als starauftritten. Mehr als andere zeitschriften sind wir darum auf die mitarbeit von lesern angewiesen, um auf dem laufenden zu bleiben: was also tut sich in eurer gegend, welche gruppen haben sich formiert, was tut sich? […] wie die zeitung letztlich aussehen wird, wie oft sie erscheint etc., Hängt mithin von den leserreaktionen ab. <Our relationship with the pop-music greats is not so bad at all, and we have no desire to stylize rural idylls and homemade productions. Yet we believe that big names are often sufficiently published in the existing music press. […] Therefore we at L AUTT tend to turn our interest to less notable events instead of star appearances. More than other journals, we are therefore dependent on the cooperation of readers to remain au courant. So what is happening in your area? What groups have formed there? What are they up to? […] How the newspaper will look ultimately, how often it appears, depends on reader reactions.> Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 362 Clearly rougher in tone is the Vienna fanzine A MERIKANISCHE K RANKENHAUS Z EITUNG (according to Fanzine Index 3, edited by Rockbüro Nordrhein-Westphalia in Wuppertal, [no year, but about 1990]), as the editor pays his ‘respects’ to his readers: Hallo, die Amerikanische Krankenhaus Zeitung erscheint unregelmäßig, behandelt seine Abonnenten rüde und ist langweilig. Der Herausgeber heißt Knut Frykholm und er hat einen Schlafsack aus Norwegen und er sieht sehr traurig aus. Knut organisiert Edwyn Collins- Konzerte in Österreich (bisher 4) und er hat eine fiese Arschkrankheit. <Hello, the Amerikanische Krankenhaus Zeitung appears irregularly, treats its subscribers rudely, and is boring. The editor is named Knut Frykholm, and he has a Norwegian sleeping bag and looks very unhappy. Knut organizes Edwyn Collins concerts in Austria (4 to date), and he has a nasty ass ailment.> Nor does the Emden fanzine S ONIC beat around the bush or offer exaggerated gestures to curry favor or gain the attention of its readership in its second issue (No. 2, year unmentioned, about 1986): IHR FICKENDEN ÄRSCHE! ! ! ! ! Wir rammen Euch mit Überschallgeschwindigkeit in Eure hohlen Hirne. SO - NIC! ! ! ! ! ! ! Hier sind die Macher von KILL Y’R IDOLS. ‘Die Ökos/ Intelecktuälän/ das Kitschblatt’ Die Disinformatanten - die Typen, die sich mit ihrem eigenen Blatt den Arsch abwischen. Und IHR? ? ? ? - Weil hier alles so schlecht und provinziell ist, geht ihr nach Berlin, Hamburg und laßt dort Euren Bauern rauß (tschuldigung: raus) Keine Angst: IHR seid dort genauso lahm und Bauernhaft wie hier. AKTION IN ÜBERSCHALLGESCHWINDIGKEIT! ! ! <YOU FUCKING ASSES! ! ! ! ! We are ramming your brains at supersonic speed. SO - NIC! ! ! ! ! ! ! Here are the ones who made KILL Y’R IDOLS. “The environmentalists and intellectuals, the kitsch rag”. The disinformers - the types who wipe their asses with their own newspaper. And YOU? ? ? ? - Because everything here is so bad and provincial, you go to Berlin, Hamburg, and act like peasants. Fear not: YOU will be just as lame and peasantlike there as here. ACTION AT SUPERSONIC SPEED! ! ! > The reviewers don’t always treat their topics as solemnly as the music critics’ rhapsodies in the S ÜDDEUTSCHE or the F RANKFURTER A LLGEMEINE . The review of a Bad Brains concert, for example, was delivered less respectfully and unctuously by Axel Grumbach in the Aachen B IERFRONT (January 1988): Sepp Gobb Marley ließ ein paar taufrische rastagelockte Knäblein mit strickmaschinenverlängerten Schwänzen hereinführen, um die Gottheit zu beruhigen und kroch, die Fußstapfen seiner verkifften Exzellenz leckend, aus dem Raum. <Sepp Gobb Marley brought in a few fresh-as-dew, dreadlocked boys with cocks extended by knitting-machines to calm the gods, and crept from the room licking his excellency’s filthy footprints.> The examples here are quoted only for examplary illustration, but they are representative. They permit reproduction at will from the fast-growing corpus and compilation into a compendium which turns many cultivators and preservers of language pale and leaves them Media of the sub-culture 363 at a loss for words. Yet, from a linguistically descriptive standpoint, this can be discussed without false shame and consideration. This is not the moment for that (but see Hess-Lüttich 1987). However, it can be confirmed immediately. For the curious, more than 400 titles are laid out in the bars, clubs, and scene cafés from A ARDVARK (Munich), to the C LUB DER LETZTEN G ENERATION (Rüsselsheim), K LAUSNER (Hamburg), K RM K RM (Berlin), O UT OF D EPRESSION (Reichenau), P URE F ICTION (Bederkesa), up to Z AP (Hamburg). And all find buyers, for “the next issue will come out one day - or perhaps it won’t” (Neidhard 1995). As to the state of the alternative press in East Germany, the former GDR, next to no verified knowledge is available. The history of the “second culture” and the “unofficial periodicals” in the GDR (Grunenberg 1993: 75-93) must still be reconstructed (as far as empirically possible). Dependent on all kinds of coincidences such as material shortages, printing possibilities, improvisation slip-ups, and persecution by the Ministry of State Security with its small-time informers from the underground cultural scenes (such as Sascha Anderson in the Berlin Prenzlauer Berg district scene), the Samisdat products were distributed in small press runs within the private circle of personal acquaintances who you thought you could trust - at times without justification. The circulation of the Berlin typewritten collection D ER K AISER IST NACKT (Berlin 1979-1982) amounted to a mere 20 copies. But, like U ND ! (Dresden 1982-1984), it remained the model of all later original graphic periodicals of the GDR, which often sought to camouflage their political commitment as cultural, literary, and art journals (produced with processes such as silkscreening, woodcuts, lithography, and serigraphy, later by wax matrix, photocopy, and finally computer printing). Therefore, it was “schwer, [sie] strafrechtlich zu verfolgen <difficult to pursue [them] by criminal law>” even by totalitarian GDR standards (Grunenberg 1993: 83). Only a few periodicals such as M IKADO (Berlin 1983-1987), A NSCHLAG , or Z WEITE P ERSON (Leipzig 1987-1989) risked as much as several papers produced in the opposition linked to the Protestant Church. These included U MWELTBLÄTTER (Berlin 1987-1989), A RCHE N OVA , and W ENDEZEIT with circulations below 1,000 copies and more explicit articulation of political alternatives. They attempted to protect their narrow scope of freedom with all sorts of tricks in the face of constantly threatened state intervention. For instance, the periodical K ONTEXT printed the remark on its title page “For internal church use only”. Or the Berlin U MWELTBLÄTTER (January 1988, 1) asked its readers to skip over the streng interne Nummerierung […] weil wir bekanntlich keine Zeitschrift sind und sollte jemand den Eindruck haben, dass wir monatlich erscheinen, so ist das 1. Täuschung und 2. Zufall […] Im übrigen verbleiben wir bis zu nächsten Nummer… äh, Zeit…äh, also bis zum nächsten Info- Blatt (bis auf Widerruf). <strictly internal numbering […] because we are clearly not a journal and if anyone should get the impression that we appear monthly, that is firstly a delusion and secondly a coincidence. […] Incidentally we remain until the next number…hmm, time…hmm, until the next info sheet (until cancellation).> 6.2 Austria In comparison with Germany, development of the alternative press in Austria took place with a slight delay. The ‘new social movements’ there and their journals were defined by their oppositional stance against parties, associations, and institutions, thus emphasizing their Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 364 independence firmly (Stamm 1988: 104). While, according to Beywl (1982: 25), the alternative press in general developed as its “Identität stiftende Gemeinsamkeit die Ablehnung jeglicher partei- und verbandsmäßiger Orgnisierung <identity the endowing common interest in denial of any controlling party or association organization>”, Dorer, Marschik & Glattau (eds. 1992) see the beginning of the Austrian alternative press in committed partyand church-oriented periodicals, such as papers founded in the early 1970s (D IE L INKE , A CTION , K AJ -Z EITUNG , R OTPRESS , and D IE A LTERNATIVE ). But then those of the first ecology movements and citizen initiatives (BI for ‘Bürgerinitiative’) followed, such as D IE U MWELT , M ENSCH UND U MWELT , BI P YHRNAAUTOBAHN or BI F LÖTZERSTEIG . The anti-nuclear power movement motivated other population segments in 1976 with voter referenda on the Zwentendorf power station as it informed readers on its goals, successes, and setbacks with its P RESSESPIEGEL ÖSTERREICHISCHER A TOMKRAFTGEGNER . The political climate which it whipped up resulted in numerous newly founded periodicals for peace and women, gays and the Third World, as well as sympathizers with all kinds of commitments: A UF , E GALIA , Z ARA L USTRA (for women), L AMBDA , S LING , B LICKWECHSEL (for gays), Z IVILDIENST (for armed service opponents), T RANSPARENT , S O L, D RAHTESEL (for bikers, environmentalists, human rights activists). Scene events in town about which one had previously been left in the dark were also reported on (in the F ALTER , P FLASTER , R OTES D ACHL ) as were problems from the countryside (L ILA , “Leben in Langenlois”) and from elsewhere in the world (L ATEINAMERIKA A NDERS , ¡C UBA S I ! , W ESTSAHARA -I NFO , A LRAUNE ). During the 1980s the political and social climate became rougher, the protests sharper, the Establishment reactions more violent, the media concentration denser, press coverage more structured. Daily newspapers and tabloids held firmly to their closed tradition against the infiltration of alternative thinking. A new wave of alternative periodicals is the result (cf. Hamböck 1989): T ATBLATT (a periodical of the autonomous scene), M OZ (a critical monthly newspaper), Z AM (an antimilitary periodical), S CHWERTER ZU P FLUGSCHAREN (a peace periodical), T AMTAM (a gay periodical), K ULTUR ZWISCHENDURCH (a Vienna revolutionary tavern paper), and quite a few others (S TÖRFAKTOR , Z USAMMEN , R EBEL ). The fanzines also came to Austria during the 1990s. They reported on the music scene and off-off cultures: C HELSEA C HRONICLE , S KUG , B RENNENDES B URGENLAND , T AKE IT OR LEAVE IT , and V AMPYROTEUTIS I NFERNALIS . Besides the self-help group organs - for the unemployed (H OCKN S TAD ) and the homeless (A UGUSTIN ) - special-interest papers emerged for those in quest of them with the necessary time and money (e.g., F RIDOLIN , for computerfreaks, Z OLLTEXTE , an ambitious periodical for landscape planning, or D ÉRIVE , for urban research). Today, the Austrian alternative press market covers a broad spectrum in terms of content, allowing a look into the scenes of autonomous cultures and subcultures (Kettler 1997). Roughly in proportion to their presence in the market, it dedicates itself to subjects such as ecology and feminism, education and antimilitarism, psychology and disabled groups, the city and provinces, foreigners and the police, sexuality in all its variations, but also to protection of animals, data, and tenants, as well as to anarchy or esoterics, and finally, removed from the field, the “Philosophie des Volkes <philosophy of the people>” (Brecht). Many of them cannot be subsumed under the schema developed by the current “leitfaden durch Presse und Werbung <guide to press and commercials> (Stamm Austria 1999). It fails to list many of the new periodicals currently on the Austrian market. 3 There are many new journals, e.g., for women (A N . SCHLÄGE ) and for students (U NITAT ) or gays (X TRA ! , P RIDE ), Media of the sub-culture 365 and periodicals of political groups of all kind (T ATBLATT , W IDERSTAND , D IE L INKE , K LASSENKAMPF ) or various cultural scenes (J AZZ Z EIT , T RIEBWERK , etc.). Closings and newly created publications keep the market constantly in motion so that historic documentation is difficult. It has not been available in Austria either up to now. For the 80s, a Viennese M.A.-thesis (Hamböck 1989) presented an initial analysis of numerous regional city journals, and of periodicals from various youth sub-cultures (S AURÜSSEL , K UDLMUDL , B RENZ , M ÖLKERSTIEGE , T RAUNSEHER , L ANDSTRICH , P UDDING , etc.). The above mentioned inventory (Dorer, Marschik & Glattau 1992) listed 352 alternative periodicals (7% of them before 1970, 19% before 1980, and 67% of them founded later). Meanwhile, many more have entered the alternative market. Despite of economic obstacles and lack of public funding, Drobil (1992: 130) regards the relatively small Austrian market as sufficiently large for the alternative press sector. The alternative press, he concludes (ibid. 136), plays an important part in the Austrian public sector, especially for minorities. Thus there is no talk of the alternative press dying in Austria. In the meantime, its interests vis-à-vis the market and the state also seek to intensify cooperation and networking, possibly by foundation of associations coordinating regional cultural activities such as the Arbeitsgemeinschaft Regionale Kulturarbeit (ARGE) or of cooperatives such as the Vereinigung alternativer Zeitschriften (VAZ). The VAZ’s union-oriented political conclusions, however, were they all to be fulfilled as desired, would obviously provoke the danger of institutionalization, joining the Establishment, and integrating - with conflicting charm for genuinely ‘alternative’ people. 6.3 Switzerland Generally accessible information about the alternative-press situation in Switzerland is scarcer still. There seems to be no archive or documentation center in which alternative press products are gathered or catalogued as in Germany and Austria. However, supported by data in the ID Archives (1991) and hints from Wolfgang Bortlik (1992: 55-60), as well as our own research at the National Library in Berne and the Volx-Bibliothek of the “Berner Reitschule”, a cultural meeting point and haven of the alternative scene, Daniel Rellstab (1997) was able to compile a list in regard to this study. 4 It gives a picture of the wide variety of alternative papers in German-speaking Switzerland and also shows their transitory nature. It indicates as often as possible the year of initial appearance, the title of the particular publication, and its primary readership target or the focus of its content. It also provides the circulation and place of publication as well as the year it went out of business, to the extent that this can be reconstructed, if it no longer exists at present (+): 1 st issue name sector amount place status 1906 Neue Wege Christentum und Sozialismus 2500 Zü + 1930 Das rote Heft Frauen 2500 Be ? 1933 CFD-Blatt Antimilitarismus 2400 Zü + 1945 Vorwärts. Sozialistische Wochenzeitung Linke 2000 Be/ Zü + 1946 Bulletin CSS. Gesundheit 10000 Zü + Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 366 1956 Clou Freidenker - 63 1959 Plus. Drucksache der Behinderten- Bewegung Behinderte -500 Grü - 94 1963 contre Beatnik ? Zü - 69 1968 Hotcha! Ein Organ fun Embryo- Informationen ? Zü - 88 1969 Focus Zeitkritisches Magazin ? Zü - 79 1970 Rote Anneliese. Sozial - kritisch - unabhängig Linke -5000 Brig + 1971 anderschume Schwule ( a / k) ? Zü - 85 1971 Blabla (Blaues Blatt) Umweltschutz ? Biel - 86 1971 Bresche. Das sozialistische Magazin Linke 1500 Zü + 1971 EineZwänzgi Jugend 13000 Zü - 92 1972 Hexenpresse Feminismus ? Ba ? 1973 Oeko-Blatt Umweltschutz ? ? ? 1973 Alternative Urner Monatszeitung ? Al + 1973 Rundschau (Courrier) (Schwangerschaftsabbruch) Frauen 2000 Be + 1974 Nachrichten aus Longo Mai Alternative Ökonomie 25000 Ba ? 1974 Soziale Medizin. Magazin der SGSG Gesundheit 3000 Ba - 92 1975 Alpenzeiger Anarchismus 666 Aa + 1975 emanzipation: die feministische zeitschrift für kritische frauen Feminismus 2500 Be + 1975 LeserZeitung Alternativmagazin ( Tell) ? Zü - 79 1975 Solidarische Entwicklung. Rundbrief Erklärung von Bern Internationalismus 15000 Be ? 1976 Afrika-Bulletin. Zeitschrift für Freundschaft und Solidarität mit den Völkern Afrikas Internationalismus 1500 Ba ? 1977 Anti-Apartheit-Nachrichten Internationalismus 10000 Zü + 1977 F-Frauenfragen Frauen 4500 Be ? 1977 Friedenspolitik Antimilitarismus Ba + 1978 A-Bulletin Antimilitarismus 4300 Zü + 1978 Correos de Centroamerica Internationalismus 3500 Zü + 1978 Der Alltag. Kulturzeitschrift über die Sensationen des Gewöhnlichen Kultur ? Zü + 1978 Zürcher Studentin Hochschule - 12000 Zü + 1979 FRAueZitig Frauen 4000 Zü + 1979 Konzept Studentenzeitung ( WoZ) ? Zü - 81 1979 Salecina Pädagogik 2400 Ma ? 1979 Stilett Anarchismus/ Kunst ( Strapazin) ? Zü - 84 Media of the sub-culture 367 1979 Tell Stadtzeitung ? Zü - 85 1979 Panzerknacker. Zeitung des Soldatenkomitees. Antimilitarismus 5000 Ba - 92 1980 ¡3w aktuell. Entwicklungspolitischer Dokumentations- und Pressediest Internationalismus -700 Be ? 1980 Bumm-S Spieler-Fanzine ? Ba + 1980 drahtzieher Reithalle ( provinz) ? Be - 83 1980 Eisbrecher Jugendbewegung ( Brächise) ? Zü - 80 1980 galopp Reithalle ? Be - 80 1980 prawda Anarchisten ? Be ? 1981 Brächise Jugendbewegung ? Zü - 81 1981 Finanzplatzinformationen. Internationalismus 6000 Be ? 1981 Katzenauge Ökologie 3300 Zü ? 1981 Widerspruch. Beiträge zur sozialistischen Politik Theorie 2200 Zü + 1981 WoZ Wochenzeitung 21000 Zü + 1982 Energie und Umwelt. Organ der Schweizerischen Energie-Stiftung Ökologie 4000 Zü + 1982 Friedenszeitung Antimilitarismus 5300 Zü + 1983 BeGayNews. Nachrichten der HAB Schwule ? Be + 1983 Bulletin CEDRI Ausländer 6000 Ba ? 1984 Fabrikzeitung. Die Zeitung aus der roten Fabrik Kultur 12000 Zü ? 1984 GSoA-Zitig Antimilitarismus 14000 Zü + 1984 Merhabe. Zeitschrift für Emigration aus der Türkei Ausländer 1100 Ba - 92 1984 Mosquito Internationalismus 4000 Be + 1984 Strapazin Comics ? Be + 1985 Passagen. Schweizerische Kulturzeitschrift Pro Helvetia ? Zü + 1985 a/ k. Das Schweizer Magazin für den schwulen Mann Schwule 6900 Zü + 1985 Banal. Anarchistisches Magazin Anarchismsus Zü - 91 1985 Fama. Fem.-theol. Zeitschrift Feminismus/ Religionskritik 1600 Ba + 1985 Rundbrief der fem.Wiss Schweiz Theorie/ Feminismus 850 Zü + 1986 Cruiser. Die Zeitung für Schweizer Gays Schwule 10000 Zü + 1986 ANN-Wochenheft Internationalismus 500 Zü ? 1986 Provo. Das widerspenstige Jugendmagazin Jugend 400 Zü - 90 1986 Zürcher Velo-Zeitung Verkehr 1500 Zü ñ 92 1987 Antisexistische Schrittversuche Hodenbaden Zü - 87 Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 368 1987 Boykottnachrichten der Aktion Südafrika-Boykott Internationalismus 2000 Ba ? 1987 Diskussion. Magazin für aktuelle Gewerkschaftspolitik Arbeit 1500 Zü - 94 1987 einspruch Literatur 2300 Zü - 91 1987 Gasette. Aktion Selbstschutz Linke 2000 Ba - 93 1987 Med in Switzerland Gesundheit/ Internationalis mus 8000 Zü + 1987 megafon Anarchismus 800 Be + 1987 provinz Anarchismus/ Zaffaraya ( megafon) ? Be - 87 1987 Rundbrief Ausländer/ Internationalism us 2000 Zü ? 1987 Saftlos Fanzine 600 Ba ? 1987 Studienbibliothek info Geschichte/ Arbeiter 1300 Zü ? 1988 Aufbruch: Forum für eine offene Kirche Religionskritik 20000 Fr + 1988 Come Out. Monatsblatt für sexuelle Variation, Politik und Kultur Schwule ? Ba ? 1988 Fluchtseiten. Informationsbulletin zur Asylpolitik Ausländer ? Be + 1988 Geo-Rundbrief. Informationen zur feministischen Geographie Feminismus 300 Be + 1988 Grabezeitung - GRAZ Autonomie 500 SG - 94 1988 Infoblatt der LIBS Lesben 150 Ba ? 1988 Jupiter Journal New Age 1500 Th - 92 1988 Stadtmagazin NIZZA Stadtmagazin 6000 Zü - 91 1988 PMS- Pro Mente Sana Psychiatrie 2500 Wf + 1988 Zündschrift. Forum für Schreibende. Literatur 1000 Ba - 94 1988 Widerstand Antifaschismus/ Anarchism us ? Zü + 1989 Aids Infothek Gesundheit 20000 Be + 1989 Alternative. Resistance Production Musik 500 Zü ? 1989 Dementi - Zeitung für die Region Basel Stadtzeitung 3500 Ba - 92 1989 Euskadi Information. Unabhängiges Baskenland Internationalismus 1000 Zü ? 1989 Informationen aus dem Widerstand in der Schweiz Antiimperialismus ? Zü ? 1989 Intra - Psychologie in der Gesellschaft Psychologie 6000 Be + 1989 Romp. Hardcore-Punk-Underground Fanzine 300 Lu ? 1989 Yeah. Jung und schräg Jugend 38000 Zü + 1990 Die schräge Zeitung - Schräz Antifaschismus 10000 SG - 93 Media of the sub-culture 369 1990 Ella. Das Lesben-Forum Lesben 350 Ba - 93 1990 Fichen-Fritz. Die Zeitung zum Schnüffelstaat Schweiz Datenschutz/ Justiz 30000 Be + 1990 Sapperlot. Informationen für eine alternative Gesellschaft Alternative Ökonomie 2000 Zü ? 1991 Grüeni Poscht. Rundbrief der Grünen Partei Bern Grüne 2500 Be ? 1993 Schwul-lesbische Presserundschau Psychologie/ Homosexuelle ? Zü + 1994 Sputnik Techno ? Zü + 1995 Untergrund-Blättle Anarcho-Polit-Fanzine ? Wä + 1995 Navigator Techno ? Zü + 1996 Protoculture Comics ? Be + The table shows that the spectrum of alternative scenes and subcultures (to the extent that they find expression in the media) is no less colorful in Switzerland than in neighboring countries. Here as there, newspapers, periodicals, and magazines provide a voice for the diverse movements of youth, students, women, peace, the environmental, and solidarity as well as the political, sexual, religious, and spiritual subcultures, the fans of theory, dance, and techno, of games, literature, and the comics, of anarchy, psychology, and homeopathy. A corresponding market may exist for Frenchand Italian-speaking Switzerland, but as far as I can see it has not yet been surveyed. As for circulation, the scale of issues printed ranges from a few dozen hectographed copies up to 38,000 for a youth journal (Y EAH ) or 30,000 for a critical data-protection newspaper (F ICHEN -F RITZ ). Still some 20,000 readers are reached by a periodical assisting Anti-AIDSand Safer-Sex-campaigns (A IDS I NFOTHEK ) or by a paper for critical church members of the “Kirche von unten” movement (A UFBRUCH ). Each year new periodicals enter the market and others go out of business. Many last but a few months, while a few emerge and pass along with the movements which sponsor them. Others have appeared regularly for more than 20 years. Obviously, those have changed over the years and now obey laws of the market more attentively than the self-realization papers of adolescent fans and freaks or aging anarchist drop-outs. One could argue about many titles cited in the table, questioning if the label ‘alternative’ was not tacked on all too generously. The traditional socialist paper V ORWÄRTS may have attracted only a few readers, but was it alternative? The Swiss cultural journal P ASSAGEN is certainly bought only by a small minority of intellectuals, but is it alternative? Are party, union, and church newspapers alternative? Criteria such as layout, choice of topic, language, style, text functions, and pictorial material, allow a more precise distinction between ‘alternative’ and ‘non-alternative’ papers, but the descriptions also show how heterogeneous the ‘alternative press’ genre is in Switzerland as well. B RÄCHISE <crowbar> was a weekly newspaper of the Zurich youth movement which first appeared in January 1981 as the successor of E ISBRECHER and was already out of business by May of the same year. The F RAUE -Z ITIG is a house organ of the “Autonome Frauenbefreiungsbewegung <autonomous women’s liberation movement>” and has appeared quarterly since 1975, today under the title F RAZ / F RAUENZEITUNG . The periodical A NDERSCHUME is still older, having first appeared in 1971, and offered information on the Swiss Homosexual Task Force (HACH). They merged in 1985 with the gay magazine Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 370 K ONTIKI and still appear today in the bimonthly A/ K, a title which new young buyers may find rather puzzling if they do not know its origin. City newspapers such as those in Vienna or the large German cities have not been able to establish themselves in Switzerland. They usually vanish quickly after a first attempt. An exception was N IZZA , a “new intercultural newspaper for Zurich and its suburbs”, which has reported on the cities’ subcultures on recycled paper since 1988. Admittedly, it could hardly have been counted among the alternative papers since 1991. This question also arises for the self-styled ‘alternative’ W O Z, the weekly newspaper for politically rather left-oriented readers. It is perhaps most comparable to the German T AZ and follows similar lines. Conversely, the M EGAFON , the “newspaper from the Berne Reithalle”, is a genuine scene magazine, a monthly paper of the capital city’s leftist autonomist movement. Since 1987, it has promoted their activities and cultural events, sometimes provoking the middle-class public. Similarly subversive, the P ANZERKNACKER , the “newspaper of the soldiers’ committee”, coordinated antimilitary resistance within the Swiss Army between 1979 and 1982 - presumably no easy task in a society which until recently preferred to view conscientious objectors for the most part as little more than illegal delinquents. A new arrival is the U NTERGRUND -B LÄTTLE , a political anarchy fanzine in the ‘underground’ tradition, which appears quarterly and is now even accessible on the Internet. In the case of journals which could maintain themselves on the market over a substantial period, there is an unmistakable tendency to professionalize. This is mostly linked to concessions in the formal sense of style and text design. The earlier F RAUE -Z ITIG today avoids identifying itself in dialect in its title. The gay magazine hides the programmatically selfconscious “A NDERSCHUME ” by abbreviation in the initials A/ K. The W O Z helps its cause through the usual press agents. N IZZA has appeared for a long time on white gloss paper. The subcultural style of the intellectually creative is exploited more rapidly than ever by the advertising industry (Lau 1992: 111). This doesn’t remain hidden from alternative activists and is noted by them with a blend of irony and frustration (N IZZA , January 1988: 5): Wer passt bei aufbrechenden Bewegungen eigentlich am besten auf? Die Polizei und die Werber. Beide schlagen: Die einen nieder und die anderen Sprüche daraus. Waren die frechen Sprüche und das lustvolle Layout, das nach 80 gehäuft in die Werbung geriet, das, wofür “D’Bewegig” auf die Strasse ging? War das endlich “Lust statt Frust”? <Who is actually doing the best job of recording the emerging movements? The police and the advertisers. Both deal with beats: One beat us up. The other transformed our ‘beat’ outlook into snappy slogans. Were the fresh slogans and the sexy layout which advertising stole from us after 1980 the reason why the movement went to the streets? Was that ultimately pleasure instead of frustration? > 7 Language 7.1 The scene’s jargon Up until now the alternative press has only occasionally been elevated to the object of linguistic interest. It has done no more (if anything at all) than to awaken the curiosity of media science or social pedagogy. Linguists preferred to dedicate their attention to the neighboring sectors of the press landscape: the youth, pop, and boulevard press. The fact, by the way, that there is no such thing as the homogeneous variant of alternative-press language Media of the sub-culture 371 makes their task no simpler. The variety of the alternative papers’ forms of phenomena corresponds to the styles, registers, and varieties used in them. However, a few rules of thumb can be noted. First, the more ‘established’ the paper, the less its language deviates from the norms of standard speech; or vice versa: the deeper in the ‘underground’ its roots extend, the more playful and open to experiment the jargon of the scene involved becomes. Now and then it also turns more shocking and exclusive. One hardly finds evidence of deviating language use in T AZ (Berlin) or W O Z (Zurich), in the city journals such as T IP (Berlin) or the cultural, musical, and special periodicals such as P ASSAGEN , M AGNUS (up until 1995), and M ARE (from 1997). But it appears all the more in the programmatically subcultural papers whose authors also wish to lend verbal expression to their degree of alienation from mainstream society. A few observations on lingual characteristics can be briefly summarized with this last section, and these may be submitted with due caution as more or less ‘typical’ for speech usage in this segment of the alternative press. Everyday journalism here does not consist in reformulating anonymous agency dispatches or professional investigative summaries, but in a self-assured expression of the authors’ own experience. Journalistic ethics are not targeted on objectivity but on the exposing thereof through radical subjectivity (Androutsopoulos 1998). The author’s “I” emerges everywhere, not only, as is normal, permitted, and desired in reviews, critiques, commentaries, and columns, but in the pronominally staged ‘authenticity’ of the report. The author doesn’t hide behind the text but displays himself as a witness who experiences, senses, hears, sees, and feels what he reports, who describes how he writes, who ‘releases’ what is inside him, pushing its way out (for more examples see Hess-Lüttich 1987; Neuland 1994; Androutsopoulos 1998; id. & Scholz eds. 1998; Schlobinski & Heins eds. 1998). But he doesn’t only express what moves him; he also addresses those whom he wants to move. Movement journalism is characterized by lingual staging of a seemingly spontaneous discussion with the reader. Address clichés, interjections, hesitation phenomena, paraverbal fillings of pauses, contact parentheses, conversational particles, modal particles, structural particles, all serve as lingual means of faking spoken conversation, marking intimate expressions of solidarity, simulating easier spontaneity. Ja, also Deutsch ist, ähm, Deutsch ist einfach Deutsch <Yes, German is…hmm…German is simply German> (N IZZA , July-August 1991: 17). Intricate subtleties are revealed in seeming banalities where dialect is the ‘personal’ language and German ‘foreign’. We are native, safe, and secure among ourselves in dialect, and the others remain outsiders: und wils sletschmal de Plausch gsi isch, treffed mer eus grad wider <as we had a discussion last time, let’s have another meeting> (B RÄCHISE 14 / 24 April, 1981). The intentional approximation to spoken dialogue with the reader also finds expression in a graphic style play with capital letters. This makes things stand out that strike the writer as “OUT-standing” or “SUCK-sess-FULL” (“AB-solut stark”, “echt AF-FENgeil”). What the author writes should appear spoken in all cases, with the help of reduced sounds, shortened sounds, and fusions, with elisions of pronouns or articles, with lexicalized paraverbal insertions. This also applies to vocabulary which seems learned through listening to everyday casual conversation in the relaxed atmosphere of youth scenes. It appears in verbs such as skaten, skratchen, and stagediven as well as adjectives such as cool, krass, and konkret, or phrases such as Bock haben, für Putz sorgen, posermäßig drauf sein, voll fett was da abgeht, nich so mein Ding. Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 372 One who hopes to be able to see through the hermeticism of individual scenes must also note aspects of specialized language and group jargon (technolects and sociolects: Fachand Gruppensprache). These scenes - for example, the house and raver scenes, the drug scene, the “alpha-scene” of the esoterics, the “eco-scene” of the biomüslis, the political scene of the autonomes, the punk scene, or that of the young faschists - all have created jargon and codes which hardly give the ‘outsider’ a chance. Each scene’s style, special vocabulary, and habits form a complex sign system with a structure that finds expression in the codes of their media and only discloses itself completely in the consciousness of that group whose semiotic expression it reflects. Hence the alternative press often helps itself unapologetically to the terminological stock of several scenes at the same time. Naturally, terms are blended together from the diverse music scenes (such as Drive, Riff, Take; Gig, Live Act; HipHop, Metal, Hardcore), the drug scene (Dope, Speed, Shit, H; hot, stoned, straight; ausgeflippt; anturnen, abfahren, abfliegen), and from the cult scenes of the spiritualists, occultists, sects of all sorts, and “ecoscenes” with the variety of sub-compartments across the entire political spectrum. This leads to an insider jargon which allows alternative journalists to signal their distance by degree from the language of the mainstream press. Fashion, media, and music serve as the main lexical reservoirs (Androutsopoulos 1997): Dreadlocks, Kapu, Docs and Piercing make the proper Outfit. One listens to Assi-Rock or Skate-Rock, Synthiepop or Bolz-Metal, Fun-Punk or Kuschel-Rock, depending on the scene, instruments, modality, and feeling. The critics’ tendency to differentiate is made fun of in words like Speedcorekreuzüberdingsbums and Industrial-Electronic-Techno-Mischi-Maschi. 7.2 Anglo-German In addition to efforts to (i) subjectify perspectives, (ii) following conversational rules rather than those of journalistic reports, and (iii) attempting to imitate unprompted speech, a fourth lingual characteristic which catches the eye is (iv) anglicizing. This is obviously not confined to the alternative press. It has long been analyzed systematically as a trademark of the pop press or S PIEGEL style or the language of economy, commercials, and computer technology. But fitting foreign idioms into one’s own language seems to occur even more casually and to succeed more as creative word play than in the commercial press. English words are integrated morphologically into the German paradigm with no effort (von den Promotern gesponsert). The genus doesn’t always occur analogous to the genus of the lexical equivalent in German (brachte den vollen Power). English verbs are easily borrowed for German inflection patterns and germanized with prefixes (slammen, comebacken, liveacten, verdealen, mitsnappen, durchgedated, gehypt bis zum kick, ein bis zum Nabel makeupierter Typ). Attributes and adjectives are also nonchalantly germanized (echt coole Vögel, ‘n tougher Typ, funkyger Soul), and used mainly as participial creations, deverbative noun formations, adjectival blends, and verbal derivations from nouns to stylistic revivals of the mixture (undergroundiger Soul, floydtrunken, new-Bewußtsein, nach dem casting suchen wir uns ‘n paar abgefuckte locations für’s shooting). Linkage of nouns in determinative compounds (Grunge-Look, Aggro-Core, Metalhead), linkage of nouns with adjectives (Crusty-Punks, Live-Gig, Creative-Rock), with verbal derivatives (Relax-Album, Experimentier-Label), with particles (In-Kreise), with numerals (10-Tage-non-stop-Tour)of some Girlie Bands or Boyz Groups, with syntagmas and Media of the sub-culture 373 phraseolexemes (das back-to-the-roots-Fieber) belong to favorite word formation patterns (cf. Ortner 1982: 121-175). So do fantasy word sequences (Fuck-the-Record-Industry, Pop- Off-Flower-Alternativ-Szene, Harmonie-Olympia-Golowin-weißderGeierwasnoch), wordgame crossings (Show-fans-ter, Triumtransvestirat, trance-sylvanisch, Who-ra, Heep-steria), and initiated word shortenings (PRer, L.A. Underground, KPM-Tour). Some abbreviations were written out as they would have sounded in English (El Pie, Ellpih). The slang does not originate from school books (Kill y’r idols, Kill’em all, Jail may be the best RX for addicts says MD). Many exclamations (see Henne 1986: 104-114) and hesitation sounds may ring truer to American ears than to German ones (whamm, wow, pfummmpf, diese uh Typen). English seems to have become the lingua franca of the German gay community subculture. Their ever more professionally published newspapers and scene advertising (such as F IRST , Q UEER , B OX , P INK P OWER , D OWNTOWN , R OSA Z ONE ) recall Stonewall, sound appeals for Christopher Street Day, Gay Äktschen, CSD Gay Pride Parades, and regularly offer Gay News and Gay Travel Tips. However, the Anglo-German of today has not been the exclusive style of the alternative subcultures for some time. In many areas of everyday living - especially the tourism, advertising, fashion, and computer branches - English has become a visible part of German vocabulary (Zimmer 1997: 20). What used to be a simple Einkaufsbummel in, say, Bern, becomes a “shopping tour durch CD- und PC-Shops, Baby- und Body-Shops, Jeans- und Spaghetti-Factory, Hosen-Saloon und High Noon, Subway-Bar und Star-Gallery, Mega- Mixed-Salad-Teller und Diana-Bestseller, McDonald’s und McClean’s” (D ER B UND 148.288 v.10.12.1997: 25). The alternative press reacted to this promptly. It plays with literal translations of English back into German (Kreuzüber instead of Crossover, Singentlangkern instead of Singalongcore, Todesmetaller insead of Death-Metal-Fans, Hartkernling instead of Hardcore); it quotes Böttcher’s ironic rap song (Ich der rastlose Wndrer / chat im Net / check die Netiquette / hack was aus / browse weiter in die Usenet Newsgroups / Cruis’ durch F.A.Q.’s von Jesus, Jusos, Usergroups …); and it sets itself rhetorically apart from the Normalos of the Handy-Dandy-Asshole Society. Kill’em all, it urged, ironically quoting the Metallica album title of the Heavy-Metal Band. It mocks the americanized mainstream society, where everybody eats their Schießburgers and Kentucky Fry Chickenshit at Mack Donaldz and for whom a ride on the streetcar through Zurich (= Zurick as in [zú: rik] and in Zurück! , the ‘keep off’ order of the guard) has become a Horror Show with cruise missiles and English announcements (U NTERGRUND -B LÄTTLE 4/ 1996: 18f.): Z URICK Z URICK H ORROR P ICTURE S HOW […] N OCH MEHR C RUISE M ISSILES M ARSCHFLUGKÖRPER AUF DENEN WIR NOCH SCHNELLER ZUM S TAUFFACHER REITEN ZUR BEQUEMEN T RAMHALTESTELLE ZWISCHEN D URCHSAGE DER L EITSTELLE A TTENTION P LEASE K OLLISION F USSGÄNGER / T RAM E CKE N ÜSCHELERSTRASSE / K ENTUCKY -S TRASSE DAS T RAM DER L INIE VIER WIRD UMGELEITET WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR V ERSTÄNDNIS DER K ADAVERABHOLDIENST DES T IERSPITALS WIRD DAS H INDERNIS BESEITIGEN E NDE DER D URCHSAGE 7.3 Text, picture, layout A rejection or overcoming of rigid beats and clear sectors of responsibility in the alternative media corresponds to the unconventional handling of traditional text genres within the sections. This naturally applies here, as with other criteria, in relation to the paper’s position Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich 374 Fig. 1: front page of A NDERSCHUME 15/ 1977 on a scale between the poles of a pronounced “total acceptance of alternative values” and “alternative values preempted by the Establishment” through semiprofessional design. In the first case the tendency is not to distinguish between reportage and commentary anymore and to disregard the distribution of dialogue roles in interviews. The reports include a mixture of criticism and commentary, assessments and conclusions, pleas and calls to action. Predominant are personal-experience reportage, reports on the status of things in self-help groups, letters to other readers (i.e., not to the editor), calendars, contact ads, short stories, and even attempted poetry. Subjective, expressive, and phatic text functions are given far higher importance than in the conventional press. Establishing contact with readers and between readers is the major goal. Then comes informing them about events which they shouldn’t miss, if they are “in” on the scene or want to belong to it. Much of the text remains virtually incomprehensible for outsiders, because it presumes too much shared sub-cultural knowledge or refers implicitly to an interaction history assumed as common. Not every reader may have shared this privilege. The relationship of text and picture has also changed. Earlier text was still written with the typewriter, preferably at an angle or pasted crosswise in the “picture” or snipped into a collage. Today, the desktop-publishing program of the home computer marks out the limits of creative layout ideas. But, if possible, each text will somehow be illustrated, be it by photos, graphics, borders, or even by one’s own illustrations, caricatures, comics, or creative alterations of adopted press photos. In this way everyday cultural symbols, icons, and codes are “translated” in the world of the sub-culture, and ironically broken or adopted as a sign of the movement (see the stone carried by Obelix on the title page of A NDERSCHUME 15/ 1977, transformed with a few clever strokes to become an imposing penis). The Zurich U NTERGRUND -B LÄTTLE , for instance, often applies this method in order to destroy aesthetic standards or cultural value systems of the “Upper World”. Skulls smile at the reader. Horror worms slither attractively around the text. “Bambi” gets caught in the crosshair of a rifle sight and is released to become the marksman’s target (4/ 1996: 3). The trivial clichés of the photo love stories are heartlessly revealed with new dialogue filling the speech balloons (4/ 1996: 32). At the same time they caricature a mass-media product and reveal moral concepts of norm(al) culture documented in it as hypocrisy. Conversely, once strictly defined movement symbols such as the terror logo of the Red Army Faction or the five-rayed anarchy star become watered-down subculture icons disarmed by serial quotes in nearly any setting. The famous “I want you! ” recruiting poster of James Montgomery Flagg is another example: “Uncle Sam” Media of the sub-culture 375 Fig. 2: U NTERGRUND -B LÄTTLE 4/ 1996 points an index finger at observers orthogonally from the picture and challenges them to serve in the Army (see Gandelman 1992: 99ff.). It is applied interculturally, and its iconic appeal takes on quite a new function, calling on those in the group to join in and to battle for whatever - a “good cause” in any case. 8 Perspectives Prognoses on further development of such a transitory and heterogeneous segment of the print media market are impossible. The often proclaimed “death of the alternative culture” (Horx 1989) and the final crisis of their press (Weichler 1983: 200ff.) drags on a bit. But as long as there are sub-cultures and they strive for expression and networking, its press will offer alternatives to the press of society. The more deviant they are, the smaller their network will be; the more commercial, the greater their chance to survive. Most of the alternative papers, which already existed 20 years ago, have experienced such a process of professionalizing and commercializing, occasionally also routinizing and bureaucratizing. Yet still more often a paper blossoms only briefly and fades as quickly along with the commitment of the initiators. However, three tendencies have emerged unmistakably. The first is stronger consolidation and cooperation between alternative media projects with the goal of overcoming isolation and particularist ineffectiveness. The second tendency is modernizing media technique, computer networking, and text design, which lends an entirely different look to most of the alternative media today than they had just a few years ago. The general availability of computers, mailbox systems, and DTP software packages may intensify this tendency still more in the future and follow the development of text design in other segments of print media and public communication (Hess-Lüttich 1999; Bucher 2001). The third tendency is the increasing complementary role of print media and “new” media in the alternative area. The egalitarian structure of new off-line text media (e-mail, news groups, chat rooms) allows the direct, nonhierarchical dialogue always demanded in the alternative press between sender and receiver as well as rapid exchange of information almost independent of source location. Meanwhile, mailbox network systems are used by a variety of alternative initiatives for international networking and coordination of their activities (for “mailbox chats”, see Neumann 1995). Alternative subcultures have already begun to form within the virtual worlds of the Internet. 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Notes 1 On the basis of 352 periodicals with an average of three staff workers at a monthly salary of ÖS 26,000 each, corresponding to a minimum-wage job in Germany. 2 I am grateful to students of mine from Berlin, Vienna, Graz, and Berne, and to other people with access to certain alternative scenes, who have provided me with some of the information given in the next three sections. 3 Under my supervision, Andreas Schaden has made a (non-representative) survey in summer 2000 in Vienna, for which I thank him very much. 4 Many of the examples in the following section have been collected by Daniel Rellstab from the various sources quoted here. Without his pilot study, quoted here as an unpublished manuscript (= Rellstab 1997), the picture of the Swiss alternative press would have remained incomplete.