Wikipedia
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 the German media city Cologne. The ZYN!-Magazine was founded in 1992 by Arno Schürhoff (Snorr) and Markus Klein (Sammy) as literary follower of various once in the mailbox scene popular literary and satire magazines. As their magazine's credo they always used the sarcastic title-phrase "Gnade bringt uns nicht weiter!" ("Mercy Gets Us Nowhere!"). Further founders were Frank Meurer and Jörn Tochtenhagen. First issues were published still as ANSI-texts and later as newsletters in the mailbox-scene and also in the FidoNet. Since 1995 the magazine was published as 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 (magazine) ("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 an own editorial publishing programm called "ZAS" which offered innovative opportunities to the magazine's editors for being able publishing articles in real time. ZYN!'s editor-in-chief Markus Klein (Sammy) founded furthermore 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 great reader public between 120,000 and 150,000 readers per month.
It was a further important guiding motto of the magazine rejecting any sort of advertise in their magazine as to avoid any potencially influences to their author's freedom of opinion by commercial acting companies. Big publicity the ZYN! magazine got as its own parody-magazine which name "Spiggl" 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 what an Iran press agency published as real news although it was obviously a satiric hoax and satire interview.