5 Years of ZINE & Writing for Madison Square Garden
130 pieces, 1 stadium full of readers and counter-intuitive lessons on growth
In the five years writing ZINE, I haven’t published a reflection on the endeavor. So, here’s a check in.
Firstly, ZINE was never meant to be what it is today.
It was — and remains — a personal blog. The proof is that I would have never named it ZINE had I known it would have grown this large.
ZINE was never intended to become a brand or “publication”... but here we are... Getting quoted in NYT, WSJ, Fast Company, VICE, DAZED, The Atlantic, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and dozens of academic journals. ZINE pieces receive more readership than many of them.
There’s a paradox I repeat often in light of this experience:
The best way to build an audience is to not build for an audience. Build for yourself. Make what you want to consume.
ZINE was, remains, and will always be just for me. Although, you’re welcome to hang too.
Besides the fact that it’s been five years... Why a reflection now?
Seated in Madison Square Garden for a Rangers hockey game earlier this year, I looked around the stadium. Sold out. Full house. While not the largest venue in the world, let alone state, it is the city’s most meaningful.
Pick any artist — they’ve played it or dreamed of playing it.
This year, I surpassed MSG stadium capacity in active ZINE readership.
The idea of packing MSG with email addresses kinda breaks your brain. It does for me at least. I don’t think we’re wired to think about scale or crowds in this manner.
You type away and press “Send” without ever seeing a face. But then imagining a stadium full of faces as you press “Send,” and, well, it’s just fucking weird.
In all fairness, an MSG ticket isn’t cheap and requires a bit more commitment... most of you here aren’t paying a penny. (You can always support ZINE here.)
Yet on the other hand, ZINE is an edited inner monologue that tens of thousands of strangers around the world want in on. There is still a profound intimacy happening.
ZINE isn’t a weekly curation of links or headline reactions. Instead, some ZINE pieces take upwards of half a year and on average roughly three months. (I don’t think I make this clear enough.)
These ideas are rigorously researched and meticulously edited, re-edited and argued against until I feel comfortable sharing these inner monologues on stage with a stadium’s worth of people staring at me. And here you are. Thank you.
With that, I wanted to reflect on some wins, and as an over-analyzer, some thoughts on this growth over half a decade.
Let’s count some wins:
ZINE won a People’s Voice Webby Award for the Best Independent Publication on the Internet (ZINE won only a couple years in... and is now +2X the size)
ZINE surpassed +1M cumulative reads and +1M email opens
ZINE published 130 pieces, 170K words and 10K sentences
ZINE is read in all 50 U.S. states and 145 countries
3-in-5 readers live outside the U.S., making ZINE global-first
+150 Substack publications now recommend ZINE, while Substack itself has spotlit ZINE on multiple occasions
ZINE printed and sold (out of) +500 copies of Audience Capture
+50 people have gone through the Understanding Media Seminar w/ The McLuhan Institute
Thousands of dollars have been paid out to collaborators, artists and guest contributors
For three years running, ZINE sponsored the Tiny Awards, which has received hundreds submissions and thousands of votes cast to name the best tiny website of the year
The META Trends report has reached +1M impressions, making it one of the (if not the) most read forecast in the world
I’ve interviewed and collaborated with some of my favorite minds including Rushkoff, Godin and Sutherland
I’ve traveled to over a dozen cities around the world bringing ideas from ZINE to life as keynotes, workshops and panels
I’ve been jump scared my by own name in articles I read
I’ve been stopped on the street.. on multiple occasions
And my biggest project has yet to come... more later...
With these wins, I want to unpack the “process” here. There’s an important message I don’t think we hear enough:
Anti-Growth Growth Is Possible
Consider it “Content Degrowth.”
Looking back, I’ve (intentionally and unintentionally) added friction to my own growth here:
I write well past 800-words per piece — anything but “snackable”
I publish infrequently and without a predictable schedule
I sometimes go months in between publishing
I’ve never optimized for clicks, shares, headlines or SEO
I haven’t had time to strategically promote on any social
I turned off comments to get people to reach out directly
I write about niche topics, avoiding any and all trending news
I paywall content after it’s been live for a couple of weeks
I pass on more podcasts, press comments and talks than I accept
I’ve purged thousands of inactive email addresses
I turn off AI from scraping content, making it less accessible
I write for an existing audience, not to attract new readers
Etc. etc. etc.
On paper, this is seemingly a losing strategy. Going against consensus, many would argue these approaches “don’t make sense” based upon what we know about our modern media environment... but I think they make total sense.
Now, I don’t think this applies to everyone, and I’m not here to lecture (there are far bigger publications out there), but here’s an alternative take on our creator ecosystem:
You can ignore “best-in-class” practices when you focus on three things instead...
Trust that word of mouth is superior
...although a harder and slower form of growth. Word of mouth growth brings a substantially more engaged and better fitting audience. Put another way, fast and big growth is not as valuable as slower yet more meaningful growth. When people have worked to find you, engage with you, and understand you — that investment signals deeper interest rather than algorithmic accident and forcing content in front of people to convert.
Let work speak for itself
There is no need to jockey for attention when you focus on quality over spectacle. Focusing on short-term noise and attention reveals an impatience I just can’t get behind. What’s the rush? Trust the process and most importantly, trust your own work. If you’re not confident in the work, allowing it to find its audience, go back and keep working until you do. Before letting go, I ask myself, “Are you proud of this yet?” If no, another round of edits. If yes, then who cares what happens next?
Realize, the personal always wins
ZINE has no editorial strategy besides: “Would I personally want to read this?” That’s it. There is no content pillars or analysis of what’s performed best. In our current media environment, the more personal and intimate commentary is, the more attractive it becomes. Removing bias in reporting (or any writing or creation) is impossible. Even the most sterile, corpo orgs can’t help themselves. But instead of expelling this perspective, how does addressing it become apart of the moat and draw?
I’ve taken many counter-intuitive steps and believe ZINE has succeeded not in spite of them, but because of them.
In my very limited data analysis of 130 pieces, there has only been one insight. In tagging pieces by themes and attributes and then crunching the numbers (total views and shares per subscribers at time of publishing), there is just one characteristic that best predicts success...
My personal favorite pieces are consistently the best performing.
Long short: There are alternative paths to “success” today that don’t require hacking, optimization, short cuts or burnout. Instead, slowness, intimacy, quality and intentionality can also work. It’s more enjoyable this way anyway.
Growth should work for you rather you working for growth.
But then again — growth should never be our priority for creation.
If you make for yourself, it’s already a win.
If people show up, even better.
We have autonomy and choice in how we approach our creative work. The gravitational pulls towards the status quo, scale or whatever the voices (inside our heads or across the internet) are telling us are ignorable.
We have alternatives to how we approach creativity and growth.
We just have to choose them.
With that, cheers to next handful years of ZINE, mindful growth and our shared curiosity amidst the craziness of our moment.
Thank you for your attention.
With deep gratitude,
Klein
P.S. My personal faves in case you missed them:
