ZYN!

ZYN! was a German satire-magazine which was published on the internet only. The magazine called itself "ZYN! - The Only German Satire Magazine". The magazine's editorial office was located in Cologne, Germany. The ZYN!-Magazine was founded in 1992 by Arno Schürhoff (Snorr) and Markus Klein (Sammy) who were follower of various once popular mailbox literary and satire magazines. For their magazine's credo they always used the sarcastic title-phrase "" ("Mercy Gets Us Nowhere!"). Further founders were Frank Meurer and Jörg Tochtenhagen. The first issues were published as ANSI-texts and later as newsletters delivered by email and also on FidoNet. Since 1995 the magazine was published as the first German satire magazine in the World Wide Web.
Publisher and chef-editors since 1992 were Markus Klein (known in the author-scene by the editor-in-chief-name "Sammy") as also Arno Schürhoff (artist-name "Snorr").
The magazine's regularly editorial staff and columnists included inter alia authors like the book-author Andreas Winterer (author-synonyme: "Zara" and writer of the science fiction parody novel "Cosmo Pollite"), Kirsten Peter Rabitsch (author-synonyme: Lethargoman, *1978 - †2006 and name-giver of the "Kirsten P. Rabitsch Award"), Stefanie Teufel (journalist and author of the advise books "Jetzt lerne ich Suse Linux" (German title: "Now I learn Suse Linux"), Elke K. (TV-screenplay author and founder of the women satire magazine "Bitchkitsch", ZYN!-column "Blondes Gift" - German: "Blonde Poison"), Christian Martin (musician, lead singer of the former "Stereotypen" band and author of the German satire magazine Titanic ("Letters For Experts"), Peter Hostermann (author synonyme "Onkelhoste" and founder of the satiric blog "senfblog.de"), Raymund Krauleidis (author of the novel "Schmoltke & Ich" and co-author of various adviser books "For Dummies") and other editors.
Since 2000 the editor-staff included also well known cartoonists like Joscha Sauer (artist and creator of the "Not Funny" cartoons), Sven K. (cartoonist and TV graphic designer), Gernot Grunga and other artists. Furthermore, ZYN!'s technical programmers developed their own editorial publishing program called "ZAS" which offered innovative opportunities to the magazine's editors to publish articles in real time. Furthermore, ZYN!'s editor-in-chief Markus Klein (Sammy) founded the "toonster"-publish house.
In 2003 the German Alternative Media Prize was given to the satire magazine ZYN!.
For many years the magazine had regularly a readership between 120,000 and 150,000 readers per month.
It was a further important guiding motto of the magazine to reject any sort of advertising in their magazine so as to avoid any potential influences to their author's freedom of opinion by commercial entities.
Big publicity the ZYN! magazine was achieved as its own parody-magazine named "Spiggl" which was (a persiflage/parody of the well known German news and politics magazine Spiegel), published a fictive satiric interview with former German chancellor Gehard Schroeder about atomic weapon plans that an Iran press agency published as real news, although it was obviously a satiric hoax and satire interview.

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