Step into any coffeehouse in any college town across the country, and you’ll find a couple of small, independent publications stacked by the door. Often photocopied and sometimes distributed only within walking distance of the editor’s apartment, they are the product of one person’s obsession: with the local music scene, or the destruction of the environment, or Japanese robots. They publish a few issues and then disappear, or, rarely, last a year or two before becoming just a memory in the minds of a handful of locals.