Mailing Lists Live on in the Digital Age

by Paul Suwan
By the time Dave Dewey took over as the administrator of the Postcard From Hell electronic mailing list in 1995, the band around which the list had originally been conceived and on whom most of its discussions focused — alternative-country pioneers Uncle Tupelo — had already broken up. More than a decade later, however, Dewey still oversees the list, known as Postcard for short, from his home in Rochester, N.Y. What it’s turned into, aside from a community of more than 1,400 independent music fans, is a good example of how e-mail discussion lists have continued to remain active and vibrant in an age when most discussion groups have moved onto such interactive Web-based forums as message boards and blogs.
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