New South, New Media The Southerner takes regional writing online     Knoxville's newest magazine has unlimited international circulation, no subscription fee, and no newsroom. It's not even a Knoxville magazine per se, it just happens to be based here.     The Southerner is part of a new and growing breed of periodical — the online publication. While most traditional print magazines do have Internet sites as well, outfits ranging from big names like Slate and Salon to a host of smaller niche 'zines have established themselves as Web-only enterprises. "We are trying to have the magazine on the Web that looks and prints the most like a real magazine," says Glynn Wilson, a UT journalism doctoral student and president/editor-in-chief of The Southerner (www.southerner.net).     Wilson, a native of Alabama, launched the publication in the spring with little more than big ambitions and a host of contacts from his decade as a reporter for various Southern papers (including Metro Pulse). Inspired by the short-lived Southern Magazine of the 1980s, he and his cohorts (including fellow UT student Ron Sitton) aim for a similar mixture of issue-based reporting, fiction, and arts writing-"the New Yorker of the South."     So far, just two issues have gone up on the site, made up of original and reprinted material, much of it generated by Wilson himself. But he hopes to eventually attract top freelancers; for a planned special issue about the late writer/editor Willie Morris, he says both Gay Talese and The New York Times' Rick Bragg have agreed to contribute.     And his goals aren't limited to written media. "Because we're on the Web," Wilson says, "we're going to do some webcasting, multi-media with audio and video."     Mark Miller, a professor of journalism at UT, has watched Wilson's endeavors closely. "I think it's a very interesting idea with a lot of potential," he says. "It's indicative of the way I think part of the American media is going to be going over the next two decades. "I think the idea of The Southerner has a lot of appeal to a lot of people," Miller adds. "And not just people who live in the South — the South is a state of mind, not just a place."     Wilson has already explored some facets of that mindstate in the first two issues, looking at the evolving concept of the "New South" and the threats to regional identity posed by urban sprawl.     Mindful that most people still like to be able to hold something in their hands to read it, Wilson says he's been careful to design the site so it will print easily. "Right now, for $3.50, you can go down to Kinko's and print our magazine and have it bound," he says.     The big hurdle for Web publications to date has been actually making money — online advertising is growing, but it can still be a tough sell. For now, participants and freelancers in The Southerner are being paid in shares of the company. But Wilson's excited about one revenue source — the magazine is the official sponsor of a new literary award, the Robert Penn Warren Prize for Fiction (with the blessing of Warren's daughter). Wilson says entry fees will go both toward the prize itself, which he plans as an annual event, and to running the magazine. Winning entries will be published, of course, online.     "For me," Wilson says, "the technology is so liberating and so impressive that I think everybody ought to be doing it." -Jesse Fox Mayshark Copyright © The Southerner 1999. Mirrored here with permission of Metropulse.