Feedback Feedback

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I do appreciate feedback but sometimes I have to respectfully disagree.

 One reader was disturbed by my ranting in a couple of posts.  Hey, I'm not into that happy hippie shit.  Readers who have been here from the beginning know that I don't hold back eXpressing myself.  Rants are part of the great zine tradition.

 And speaking of zine tradition one person said it looks unprofessional to loosely format my zine, i.e., if it only takes 2 1/2 pages to fill an edition then I'll leave the white space.

 Zine = professionalism?

 I have more important criteria whether or not a zine neatly fills each page like Time magazine.  I think easy-to-read type and layout is more important.

 It was suggested I should fill in the white space with an illustration, making it as large or small as needed.  This reminds me of the old days of newspapers where the editor would throw in a pithy fact or quote - a filler - to avoid the dreaded white space.

 With my blog I'm not worried about white space.  I write as long as needed.  And with that freedom I can't be bothered with the physical limitations of the dead tree format.

 It's like with my photography.  It's a hobby.  Thanks to digital photo-editing I don't have to confine myself to the 5 X 7 or 8 X 10 format: I crop the image so that it looks good, not to fit a preconceived format like the bad old days of film and darkrooms.

 I don't want to waste my time trying to please other people, cramming a round peg into their stupid square hole.

 So when I print out a hardcopy zine there might be white space.  Lots of it.  Of course my paying subscribers might be upset.

 All zero of them.

Comments

X. Dell said…
People confuse "professionalism" with (1) competence, (2) excellence or (3) value. In reality, I can point you to numerous examples where competence, excellence and value have been slaughtered on the altar of professionalism.

Since I didn't see the comment you're referring to, I'm afraid I have no feedback to your feedback of the feedback.
6:06 PM
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