Stop the Presses
| Zine | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Stop the Presses |
| Publisher: | Nut Hatch-Entropy |
| Editor(s): | |
| Date(s): | 2001 |
| Series?: | |
| Medium: | |
| Size: | |
| Genre: | |
| Fandom: | Professionals |
| Language: | English |
| External Links: | original ordering info |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
Stop the Presses is a Professionals zine.
From the Editorial
Almost a quarter of a century after the creation of The Professionals, the show has become a legend. The fandom is as busy and almost as creative as it ever was, and the most astonishing thing about it is that it's still a fresh, growing fandom ... new people are coming on board every year. I often wonder how many of the original "core" fans are still with us, but the fact is, though the people who made up the original fandom of 1978 and 1980 have probably moved on to other things, the "new blood" entering this wonderful realm has made up their leaving.A few of us, however, were there then ... and we're still here! I first saw the show late in 1979. It had been screening in Australia a wee while before I was even aware of its existence, but I had cause to tune into an episode ... and the rest is history. Zines started rolling through various photocopiers in a couple of years, and when the Internet arrived it didn't take me too long to enlist. We went online for emails in 1996, and the fannish press "went up" not long after. Time flies when you're having a ball!
In fact, time races by so fast, it's only when you pull out your trivia scrapbooks and notice the dates on some of the items that you realize how old you are. How much a piece of history the show itself has become. And how rare and invaluable that trivia collection is.
On several occasions I've been asked to sell some or all of it ... sorry guys, I couldn't and wouldn't part with the only copies I have of theatre programs, paperbacks, annuals, whatever. But I've always liked to share ... and fundamentally, this is where THE PROFESSIONALS: STOP THE PRESSES began.
Several fans have mentioned to me in the last six months or so that they are relatively new to this fandom. Their collections comprise only what they have been able to secure from friends who've been here a lot longer. Mention to them a feature article entitled, "Martin Shaw tells why he threatened to kill Lewis Collins" (!) or "When Lewis Collins shot it out with the Police" (!!), and -- well, eyes light up, explanations are demanded, and soon I'm describing the avalanche of memorabilia that tumbles out of the cupboard if you don't stack the shelf just right!
The question was ... how to disseminate this treasure trove without putting a price on it and selling it so that it either disappears into the cupboard of one other lucky person, or else scatters like hay seeds in a thousand directions and never sees light of day again. The first thought that went through my mind was to OCR and recombine the features into an all-new format, but this was problematical on two counts.
One: this is copyright material, and while it's perfectly legitimate to organize an archive and provide photocopies to media and fans, provided less than 10% of any given publication has suffered the fate of photocopying, it's quite another thing to re-typeset and form a new publication from these existing works. So, OCRing was out, almost as soon as it was mooted, for legal reasons.
[...]
So ... lean and mean was the way we chose to go. And here we are. 250pp, hundreds of thousands of words of original text from original papers and magazines ... gatefolds, digital art, hardcovers, floppy disks ... Adobe Acrobat files, original journalism, and a printer-ready image bank with ~100 color pictures, many of which have been digitally repaired from rare sources where the only available copy was badly damaged!
Does it classify as a fanzine?? Well, yes, in the original sense of the word "fanzines." Back in the 1920s and '30s, a "fan magazine" wasn't a publication about fans! Right up into the 1970s, a "fanzine" was a professionally produced magazine aimed at ... fans. No stories (unless you want to count the various works of fiction passed off as fact by stringer journalists!), oodles of photos, and a non-fiction text. If that's a fanzine, so is this!
Nowhere in this Waffle have you seen me claim that this archive is comprehensive, exhaustive or complete. As I said, whole albums are gone, and where things went missing fifteen years ago, I'm not even remembering clearly what was there. But I do believe that you have here, in one hit, at least 50% of everything there ever was, about these people in this era.
[...]
Imagine this: a year from now, a newcomer to the fandom can, with one order for a two-volume set, collect the entire opus of media publicity, comment and review, with only minor exceptions -- such as a feature so peripheral that it was weeded out on the criteria set out above.
This is our goal! As far as we know, this service has never been offered to fans, of any fandom. We see something wonderful happening, and if you would indeed like to participate, then go ahead and send whatever xerox copies (not the originals!!!!) to:
Nut Hatch - Entropy Express PO Box 270 Brighton 5048 South Australia
We will sort, collate, organize, print, bind, promote and distribute ... and if you would like to be credited in Volume 2 as a content provider, then don't forget to enclose a sheet with info regarding how your credit should appear (ie., your name or your pseudonym or email handle? Do you want the folks at the office to recognize your name, or do you prefer to be the toast of the Internet chatrooms?!)
And on that note of optimism, I'm going to close this Waffle.
All the best for 2001,
JJ/editor [1]
About the Reprint
From the publisher:
APRIL 2003 LIST UPDATE. You may already know NHE ... we published the STOP THE PRESSES archive in 2000 - 2002 (reprinting now!).
[snipped]
The STOP THE PRESSES page is back online for the first time since mid-2002, because the archive book is headed for its (gasp!) LAST AND ABSOLUTELY FINAL REPRINT in May 2003. If you want/need a copy of this item, this really is your last chance. After this, STOP THE PRESSES will be replaced in our lists with PROFESSIONALS 25th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION, the CD-Rom set ... which has a Mac version coming along very soon. (Negotiations are underway at this time to produce the Mac software, and barring unforseen problems, virtually all of our disks will be available for Mac in the next few months). [2]
A media archive, tracing the show and its stars from 1977 to '91 ... a 330pp hardcover volume, handsomely bound in black marble ... a CD-Rom archive of photos, A3 gatefolds, rare photos galore. the complete text of every available media article featuring Lewis and Martin from the Professionals years, through the next decade, from The Final Option and They're Playing Our Song to Cassidy and Jack The Ripper. 300,000+ words, loads of pictures STOP begins with a new leader arcticle [sic], 'The View Back to TV's Cold War,' then the PROS press kit — and the fun begins! [3]