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In current discussions of the democratization of media production, of ‘we the media’, where everyone is a journalist, everyone a publisher, the focus has been on digital culture. Yet in the shadows of this explosion of digital-led creativity and media making, there has been a resurgence in the production of one of the oldest forms of media, the small-scale independently owned printed magazine. These magazines are being made by the young ‘digital natives’, informed and aided by digital literacy, but the medium of choice remains print. This article aims to describe and define these independent magazines (indies), distinguishing them from DIY zines, fanzines and mainstream niche consumer magazines. In their choice to rejuvenate rather than reject print, the indies allow us to explore the appeals of medium specificity and material culture, and how some of the current themes of media democratization – digital and design literacy, Pro-Ams, the DIWO ethos – are played out in this renewal of ‘heritage’ media.

The second wave of feminism in Australia became a popular reality for ordinary women through many forms of media, and especially through the new women's magazine Cleo. The reader letters published in Cleo throughout the 1970s provide rich, if productively problematic, evidence for the media historian's desire to interpret the meanings readers can make from magazines. In this case, the desire is to understand how younger, ordinary (non-activist) Australian women made sense of the immense challenge of feminism. Through letters written in response to Cleo's feminist journalism (and journalism about feminism), it is clear that a popular feminism was being experienced in the period of the second wave.

Magazines are one of the oldest of media forms, arguably 'the most successful media format ever to have existed' (Holmes & Nice 2012: 1). But in an era of digital and convergent media, where technological platforms are multiplying, how can a magazine be defined? Teaching and researching in the space of magazines requires us to define our object of study. Producing and reading magazines involves an understanding of what the medium is, and what it is not -not a book, not a newspaper, not a constantly updated website. But it feels as if the ground is shifting beneath our feet. This paper will explore the current thinking about what magazines might be, drawing on a number of themes that emerge in the minimal scholarship available, textbooks, publishing industry websites, blogs, tweets and examples of magazines. After this discussion, a definition will be attempted that aims to not only 'hold' the magazine as it takes shape in the current climate, but might function across the long history of this most adaptable medium.

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