Freesheet

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Freesheet is the term for a publication that is both a zine and a newsletter. Being a zine and not a professional newsletter, freesheets are unprofessional, home-made, small circulation publications with features on local music scenes, documentaries from daily life, art and political commentary.

The format of a freesheet is often a photocopied A4 sheet folded to make a 4 page A5 zine, usually left for free in record shops, cafés etc. One visual distinction between freesheets and bigger zines such as punk fanzines is that freesheets do not have a cover but are immediately text like a newsletter. Freesheets are not confined to just a single A4 sheet and can often make up 8 to 12 page A5 zine.

For example in Dublin, Ireland, in the pre-internet era, monthly freesheets facilitated the communication about imminent gigs and other events in the independant punk music scene aswell as commentary on political and societal events which may become quickly dated if published in a bigger punk fanzine that takes longer to produce.