Rolling Music Writers' Thread

Think so, yes. More info when I get it.

Ron Charles ‏@RonCharles 20m20 minutes ago Manhattan, NY

Ellen Willis's daughter Nona accepts #NBCC Criticism prize for ESSENTIAL ELLEN WILLIS.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B_7so-_UwAA0vyt.jpg:large

One the first, still one of the best.

Posted this on a freelancers thread but maybe its better here:

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6707243/music-journalism-usa-today-times-picayune-daily-news

Music coverage at metropolitan dailies has taken a major hit in recent weeks, with writers at several legacy city papers leaving their full-time positions.

Jim Farber announced on Sept. 17 that he had been let go from the New York Daily News, where he had been covering music since 1990, in a round of layoffs that hit the paper's highest-profile talent particularly hard. New Orleans’ Times-Picayune dissolved its music department in a 21 percent budget slice of the paper's content operation. The Advance Publications-owned title laid off music writer Alison Fensterstock and offered her colleague Keith Spera a metro reporting job that would, according to a Facebook post, allow him to "write the occasional music-related news story."

The 2.8-million circulation national daily USA Today, meanwhile, said goodbye to its longtime music writer Brian Mansfield. The Nashville-based 18-year veteran of the paper reveals his next move will take him out of traditional journalism into a new role as content director at public relations firm Shore Fire Media (Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, St. Vincent).

Saw Alison Fensterstock speak at an EMP re New Orleans bounce music and other subjects, and have read her stuff. Its a shame she has been laid off

"Music Coverage Endangered" in a world where there's like three Noisey posts on the fucking Future/Drake tape

obviously great but not surprising -- the thinking is almost certainly "show previews can run in briefs, national music stories can be wire."

fwiw the person who got me into journalism in the first place is still at the paper but again it's more metro/lifestyle

*NOT great. christ. (as if anyone doesn't know my stance on newspaper layoffs by now)

re: writing for free

I've never done it because I generally don't think we should, but do you all make exceptions for, say, a badass publication that covers great shit and all-around rules but exists largely thanks to the efforts of volunteers? (They do sell ads.)

Like I love this magazine - a sort of fringe-ish but substantial publication in a big city - and pitched a story idea and they say no one gets paid for contributions. Which I don't have any reason to NOT believe.

Should I be more skeptical?

If it's something like ESOPUS or whatever that clearly exists to exist, the do it.

If it's like Brooklyn Mag or the L Magazine or whatever the version of that is in your city, then pass with a quickness

Or just go pick any Vice vertical and they'll pay you a little bit more than free!

more the former than the latter, imo

thanks wgw

(xpost)

Sometimes I wish there were, or had been, a music publication that worked on a similar model to the old Mean Machines mags I used to read: A small, familiar editorial team; not afraid of being ribald or humorous; two-page major album features including 2-3 capsule reviews by different members of staff representing differences of opinion. Could that have worked?

Mean Machines? gaming zine

yeah from the early 90s. I used to love it when I was a spotty teen. They weren't afraid of making fun of themselves and the content they were covering. I guess Select had a similar sense of humour in its heyday. But yeah, I never knew why it's always been the case that publications and sites depend on the view of just one person when talking about an album for example.

Down Beat publishes 3-4 reviews a month where 3 different writers cover each album. But that's jazz so nobody knows about it.

http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2016/01/8587714/grantland-redux-mtv

5 Grantlanders now at MTV Music News website plus Greg Tate and others

From Jess*ca Hopper tweet--Brian Phillips, David Turner, Hazel Cills, Molly Lambert, Amy Nicholson, Meaghan Garvey are @MTV now.

Oh, and Jessica is now editorial director at MTV news! I guess Pitchfork has some job openings now

Have people ever gone to MTV.com for music writing before this? I can't remember ever reading an article there. I just assumed it was there so people could stream whatever episodes of The Challenge or Teen Wolf they'd missed.

I never have.

So I missed the old news from November 2015 that Hopper was leaving Pitchfork
http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2015/11/13/music-critic-and-editor-jessica-hopper-on-her-departure-from-pitchfork

http://www.mtv.com/news/2727414/brother-from-another-planet/

Greg Tate's piece on David Bowie from the site

jessica was the one who let me do the dollar bin column for pitchfork review. haven't heard anything since she left. so i guess i'm not doing it anymore. it was fun while it lasted!

Don't see who her successor there is, listed online...

serious question? have things ever been worse? obviously the answer is "no, but you've never" but I can't think of a time in the past... 7-8 years or so with a worse ratio of people who want me dead (via twitter and email, sometimes in those words) to people who want me not-dead (via payment for work)

I haven't suffered that (thank goodness) but in terms of pitching and getting responses, I can't begin to imagine the floods people are dealing with on all levels. (Heard an anecdotal story that confirms what it must be like on the editorial front.)

I can't imagine any freelancing situation that could be described as a "flood"

In terms of promo mail to sort through on the one end and pitches on the other? If I'm not in a constant flood myself, I don't know what else to call it.

relevant

https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2017/mar/31/five-things-i-learned-as-guardian-music-editor-rock-music-writing-michael-hann

that one is a treat.

"There used to be room on the charts for something dynamic and exciting such as the Arctic Monkeys."

TBF, that was a quote from someone else.

what is this "fair" you speak of...?

it was just a bright neon quote to me.

here's a thing I wrote about music writing way back when...way back.

https://medium.com/@markcoleman57/the-opposite-of-a-career-or-how-i-became-a-rock-critic-787020176542

Now that there is a good read.

id like to know how ppl keep from feeling like 99% of the writing they do isn't just ineffectual in the grand picture of life—wasnt it ever thus or w/e—but ineffectual even at reaching the ppl you want it to reach, or even making waves in the smaller communities in which we're writing

it just feels like shit isnt moving, theres no sense of a 'conversation,' just a lot of ppl being mad

try teaching

I wonder how much of it is just down to circumstance and luck. I mean: writing for the AMG when I did meant that as time went on I kept hearing from more and more people who had read my work and, in a number of cases, had said they discovered many bands as a result, that what was 'just' my words intrigued people and meant something. I still get occasional comments on those fronts, so in that regard I've been lucky enough to get a sense of validation, for lack of a better word. I don't feel my work is deathless, but knowing that it connected with others at a particular time and (virtual) place is enough.

"Over the course of 1977 and ’78 I attended concerts by, among others: Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Griffin, Woody Shaw, Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra and The Art Ensemble of Chicago."

that there's an edumacation.

"it just feels like shit isnt moving, theres no sense of a 'conversation,' just a lot of ppl being mad"

there are lots of little conversations everywhere.

the internet makes me not want to read music writing at all. that's the truth of it.

I'm still adjusting to how disposable music content is these days. Publications used to print reviews with great authority, as if they were the final word. They were literally archived, and re-printed year after year. They were written so you could go back to them.

Now many reviews (to the extend publications even run reviews) are designed to grab clicks by commenting on "the conversation" or whatever the outrage or hastag of the week is. They're takes that are intended to look like they're original or even contrarian, even though they're clearly intended to square with the value system of their perceived readers. And it does work for grabbing clicks, but the content ages horribly because of it.

The other challenge, mostly unrelated, is for whatever reason readers seem less interested in ever in curated recommendations. People don't want to read about bands/artists they've never heard about

just looking at the gig listings in the village voice when i was a kid was powerful and overwhelming. i don't know what i would be like if i were growing up now. the too muchness. i would probably just retreat into one of those smaller conversations on the web. i suppose it would have been nice to have people to talk to about stuff i liked when i was a kid.

i guess reading reviews felt like talking to people about back when i was a kid, though of course w/bangs or christgau it was one sided conversation

about music

"People don't want to read about bands/artists they've never heard about"

the RIYL generation has VERY specific likes/dislikes. they do not want surprises. but maybe that has always been true. people like comfort.

it did feel like a conversation. the letters in Creem were the best. the letters in most magazines. except comic books. those people could drive you nuts.

x-post

i still feel like more people could DIY it and make some money? maybe? there is the youtube route but that's not for everybody. but just a cool website. doesn't cost much. what do people even read online? pitchfork and...uh.....which is my point. advertising. spotify links. whatever. i'm no financial genius. it takes some doing though.

it just seems weird that websites are dead. spotify deaded everything. someone did.

I mean I for one feel that my work is deathless, in that there is no point at which a review is sufficiently old that no one is going to send me hate mail for it anymore

have things ever been worse? obviously the answer is "no, but you've never" but I can't think of a time in the past... 7-8 years or so with a worse ratio of people who want me dead (via twitter and email, sometimes in those words) to people who want me not-dead (via payment for work)

The convo kinda veered from this original post, but some of this unfortunately seems unique to the experiences of a woman music writer. Like, I don't get all that much hate on Twitter as a guy, aside from the occasional band-orchestrated flood if they don't like a review I write (I had one band tweet at me to go fuck myself, then for the next three days my timeline was all retweets and likes telling me to go fuck myself). But that's pretty tame and just on Twitter—I don't get emails telling me that, and I'm guessing most of the guys itt don't get many hate emails, either.

And yeah, the idea of getting hate mail for a very old review. Never, never, never happens to guys, I don't think.

My relationship with music writing and views on it would be INFINITELY different if I were routinely getting threatening mail for shit I wrote years ago. I just don't have the stomach for that.

Writing about music if you're a minority is as bad as it's ever been.