Is SPIN really circling the drain?

Wonder if he knew what his status would be when he just left Slate...

The only surprise here is that there are still 19 people left at Spin Media to fire.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/09/8552208/spin-media-lays-19-kills-emvibeem-print-edition

They have a lot of sites still! From their site:

SPIN Idolator Brooklyn Vegan Stereogum Gorilla vs Bear PureVolume Pretty Much Amazing XLR8R Buzznet Concrete Loop Alter The Press Absolute Punk Under The Gun Review Punk News PropertyOfZack Direct Lyrics Vibe Celebuzz The Frisky Celebslam Crunktastical Egotastic Fanpop Go Fug Yourself Pink is the New Blog Socialite Life The Superficial Videogum WWTDD

Although I guess they shut down Videogum so that list might be a bit out of date...

The Superficial and WWTDD payin' everybody else's salaries.

Misogyny is a great business plan.

Phil knows that as well as anyone

Not really; I got laid off from my porn job almost a decade ago. My salary was too high. Sound familiar?

Before the latest cuts:

Spin has been through multiple rounds of layoffs. In early 2013, the company reportedly had about 250 staffers. Its current headcount, Blackwell told Capital, is “just north of 120,” plus freelancers

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/08/8550866/beleaguered-spin-medias-new-ceo-stephen-blackwell-lays-out-plan

http://www.spin.com/writers/carl-wilson/

Spin's review section for albums now being released may be gone, but Carl got to write about the new U2.

thank god there's somewhere we can go to read an old white dude write about U2

http://img.izismile.com/img/img5/20120109/1000/daily_gifdump_10.gif

Talking of U2 and old dudes, I notice Rolling Stone's obligatory five-star David Fricke review has been published. Didn't see that one coming.

you're gonna be an old white dude one day jordan

is that track 4 of the new album?

to the tune of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF4GS9cSll4

See ya:

http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/mediawire/269917/spin-loses-another-editor-in-chief/

So the claim to fame of Spin's current CEO, Stephen Blackwell, who dropped EIC Marks, is just having run website death and taxes

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/6251409/spinmedia-ceo-qa-with-stephen-blackwell

Who's going to fill the positions left by departing employees, like those from SPIN?

There had been changes in the workforce on a property-by-property basis. Acquisitions are delicate, and when there’s an acquisition, a lot of times that can lead to people leaving because values might change or missions might change. When I came here and looked at the scope of what our workforce is actually doing, we’ve got an incredible team here. We’re a little light on the editorial side in my opinion, so I'm treating our brands as best as I can; how do our brands function in the market and with our audiences. The way that I’m building the team back up is with a focus on that, and making sure we have an agreeable split between how many editors and people not on editorial. We’ll be hiring eventually for people to fill those positions, and creating new positions.

a staff of three people seems light, yeah

tbf lots of places are lax about updating their About pages: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.spin.com/about/

Carl Wilson back at Slate too.

the extended spin joke running through tonight's SOUTH PARK was pretty fun

wow what was that???

https://twitter.com/bookofriot

joshua clover writing epic story of #HowIQuitSpin rn

He really doesn't like Charles Aaron.

hashtag how i got tricked into reading a 9/11 memoir

yeah christ

It's also a "leaving New York" memoir.

#HowIQuitSpin 129. THE ARISTOCRATS

"There r some things u should know abt how I started at Spin" being tweet #107 in the series is amazing

that's the only one i read

Not sure tweets are the right format for this?

Or maybe they are, is i suppose the point?

#tl,dr

loving this tbh

lefty poet writing twitter memoir about how he quit being a music journalist is me-bait as hell

does it matter that he's left-handed?

https://twitter.com/1000timesyes/status/623123039950098432

if this does not end in a rickroll gonna be disappointed tbh

Edited version…

Spin sends me a CD to review: Party Music by The Coup. Now this is a CD to get fired with.

This is the moment of true despair. It is then that I know I have lost. Had lost long ago.

I have to break up with Spin in person. But there's a problem: I don't really have the spare cash for a transatlantic flight.

That seems like a good irony. I will fly Paris>NYC to see a French movie.

I am oddly excited for the Tori Amos covers album. but I realize w great sadness I will not getting all my music for free anymore.

A plane hits the WTC. Then another one. END OF CHAPTER FIVE

we decide we will go downstairs to the market to get supplies, staples.

one is daughter to a great poet; weve had a couple conversations, Shes told me some things.

Understand: Paris had beautiful garbage cans.

I try to cut down on ice cream, to write poems. I get an email fr Spin. They tell me I owe them sixteen thousand dollars.

I am oddly excited for the Tori Amos covers album. but I realize w great sadness I will not getting all my music for free anymore.'

someone should reply at him the world's tiniest violin score

This guy sounds like an unbelievable tool.

Really? I'm enjoying the voice. A nice surprise, since I mainly remembered him as the guy who blurbed "The Fragile" in their best of '99 issue, describing it as "the hard bulletin."

His 1989 book is very good. Not so crazy about these tweets.

someone should reply at him the world's tiniest violin score

― da croupier, Monday, July 20, 2015 5:03 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This.

Also: "Pirate Bae"

CHAPTER SEVEN

After a couple days we head back downtown. The subways are running again. GWB has told us that we need to shop for America. The planes still aren't flying and I have to rebook my flight back to France. First I reschedule my Spin meeting. Breaking up is hard. I schedule the meeting for a week later and then rebook my ticket home.

I feel like the oddity of having flown into NYC on a caprice a day before 9/11 means I am probably a terrorist. This feeling will last for weeks, months. Its a time of paranoia. I miss four days of running, first time in a dozen years. When I start running again along the East River I keep seeing planes diving toward me from the corner of my eye & panic. Can't stop thinking about the air toxicity which is a real thing but also a figure for the ambient fear gripping people. I visit the memorials in union square above the closed zone but i dont find them moving, just disturbing.

Its a historical genre, right? The periods when the line blurs between the missing and the dead. i think about Chile. People start to attack Muslims, possible Muslims taxi drivers shopkeepers people in turbans. Seriously, fuck the human spirit. Some days at least. Fiends go back to getting together, little dates, everything feels furtive, drinking starts at noon.

It is a lost time. But the CDs come out, delayed a week. Tori, The Blueprint. But The Coup has its own special delay. Because The Coup original cover shows them blowing up the WTC. That's what they sent me back in June. So the review is on the street saying The Coup and I want you to throw a brick through the window of Spin offices. But the CD is nowhere to be found because they are having to print new covers and now finally it is time. It is time for me to go into the offices I have suggested get bricked & walk into the managing editor's office and quit.

you can kinda see why he didn't just plop this on wordpress

rip to his exercise routine, never forget

i mean, as far as a memoir using 9/11 as a backdrop about the time you quit a music critic goes, it's not bad. but i can see why he chose a more dramatic medium.