WordPressing a Webzine

Any reader of this post is likely to know that WordPress is a popular blogging platform. So popular, in fact, that it is often used to publish other new media genres, such as static websites and content management systems. Occasionally, it is used to publish a webzine, the online equivalent of a “zine,” which is a version of a magazine or fanzine that in most cases is self-published by its authors, printed through a small-business or chain-store photocopier, and circulated to a local or specialty audience for free (sometimes with heavy advertising). A zine is usually but not necessarily a periodical. In the case of this project, students in my Intro to Writing and Digital Publication course collaborated to publish an issue of Writers of the Web, a webzine about bloggers, on a single WordPress site. As administrator of the WordPress site (and editor-in-chief of the webzine), I made each student an editor so that they could write pages (in WordPress, a contributor can only write posts). Each student then selected a web writer and wrote a feature article profiling that writer and analyzing his or her work. As novice bloggers posting on course readings as a weekly assignment, this project provided students with an occasion to think about blogging as a lifestyle and even a career path while familiarizing themselves with and critiquing the work of more well-known and established writers of the web.