For a raft of young, independent female journalists and online producers, beauty is zine deep. Technologically savvy, sharp-tongued, and fiercely individualistic, these new cultural critics - the founders of magazines with names like "Bust" and "Wench" - decided to band together this week in an official site network called "EstroNet - the Estrogen-Powered Web Network."
EstroNet - which draws shoestring indie efforts Maxi, gURL, and Wench together with more funded ventures like Tripod's Women's Room, Pseudo's Minx, and print zines Bust and Hues - is intended to drive traffic and brand recognition for sites that, in the absence of marketing budgets or advertising, have relied on word of mouth to build their audiences.
But even as they follow the corporate model of site aggregation, the last thing these sites want to do is lose their indie allure, says EstroNet creator Heather Irwin of Maxi. "We're not trying to make this some kind of major media company. It defeats the point of what were trying to do," says Irwin. "We are trying to circle the wagons against the major media companies drowning out the new voices that are happening." Minx editor Kelly Alfieri says the broad market of women's sites targeted at 18- to 25-year-old women like Heart's HomeArts can be "stale," while the EstroNet sites are "more P.O.V."
More than a gateway to the sites, EstroNet will feature its own content, like profiles of women in technology, and the creators plan to organize public salons, says Irwin. While many of the zines do not currently feature advertising - EstroNet is not explicitly designed to help garner ad dollars - that's "not outside the realm of what we'd consider," says Irwin. Like many of her fellow zine editors, Irwin works for another media company (in this case The New York Times Electronic Media Company) and is simply trying to make Maxi "a full-time job."
Bundled together into one network, the zines in EstroNet might seem to till nearly identical ground. But while they fill the same sassy, savvy demographic niche, the market for female readers is ripe for such diversity, says Aliza Sherman, who runs the Web shop and consulting service Cybergrrl. "If you look at the magazines like Glamour, Mademoiselle, or Cosmopolitan, they're barely different from one another, but the people who are loyal readers ... would beg to differ," Sherman says. "As long as the people who are creating it think they have something different to share, they're going to find an audience."
But Sherman, who has overseen an array of national chapters of Webgrrls since 1995, isn't certain that the homegrown zines will ever become financially viable. "The beauty of most of these zines is that they're not commercial," says Sherman.
Aggregation, particularly with women's sites, has been widespread in recent months. In September, iVillage announced it was consolidating its array of sites under one female-friendly banner: "LifeSoup: The Women's Network," and Wire Networks followed suit last week with the creation of Women.com, to host Women's Wire, Beatrice's Web Guide, and Healthy Ideas.
One of the most successful components to EstroNet may be not the site, but the running conversation about it in the "EstroList" - a high-power mailing list of female writers, producers, and analysts. Jupiter analyst and EstroList member Yvette Debow says the discussions on the list have been "highly intelligent and highly focused." "It's much less from a content point of view," she says. "We don't share the same ideas, but we share passions."
