I think part of it is the contrast btw their big ambitions – and the fact that they do have good, in-depth reporting (like the piece I linked to above) – and the podunk quality of some of the editing, lack of copy editing, etc. If it were Brooklyn Vegan or something I wouldn't bother.
― Are You There God? It's a-Me, Mario (morrisp), Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:03 (one year ago) link
haha i don't think morrisp should be the fall guy for 21 years of ilx nitpicking pitchfork
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:05 (one year ago) link
My local newspaper, around for a century, fired several more copy editors yesterday. It's been a problem for two decades.
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:06 (one year ago) link
Allegedly
― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:09 (one year ago) link
, claimed Soto.
― omar little, Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:12 (one year ago) link
lol
― the dreaded dependent claus (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:17 (one year ago) link
Just to be clear, I do put the onus on the editors (not the writers). If the writers are inexperienced, the editors should (ideally) guide them! The same applies when a record review seems poorly organized, etc.
― Are You There God? It's a-Me, Mario (morrisp), Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:18 (one year ago) link
Here's Rolling Stone and Billboard reporting on the same podcast episode – they each use "said," "recalled," "explained," "described" (etc.) to describe what the hockey players said. (Billboard also uses the terms "allegedly" and "claimed" once each; RS not at all.) Why are these publications less skittish?
― Are You There God? It's a-Me, Mario (morrisp), Tuesday, May 2, 2023 12:43 PM (thirty-five minutes ago)
it's hard to say... i wouldn't describe them as less skittish. the answer is probably that they're less organized. pitchfork has had the same news editor for like 15+ years, i think they prob have a more sound editorial structure in place, guidelines that the writing team knows to follow etc. having worked adjacent to billboard personally for several years.... they're less, um, journalistically rigorous than lots of their competitors, i'll just put it that way. rolling stone i've never worked at so idk how they operate... they've also had some major editorial screw ups even very recently (for example) so i'm not sure i'd hold them up as a bastion of editorial standards either
to be clear morris, i don't disagree w/ you. when i was still working at a music website where i was touching 5+ news stories per day we had convos about the creep of "allegedly" into a lot of our news stories where it felt like the allegations didn't really need that addendum. news orgs probably could stand to swing the pendulum back in the other direction, but again the risk-reward calculus is incredibly out of balance bcuz you don't even need to have merit to a lawsuit to stick a website running on small margins (all of them) w/ a legal bill they can't really afford. and that goes for pitchfork and conde too
― J0rdan S., Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:39 (one year ago) link
Thanks, that’s interesting/thoughtful (and yeah 100% agree on that RS screw-up… I’m actually super not into RS, for various reasons).
― Are You There God? It's a-Me, Mario (morrisp), Tuesday, 2 May 2023 17:58 (one year ago) link
if you don't work for a corporation - or even a mid-sized business, a municipality, whatever, really - you likely have no idea just how much lawyers and legal departments run the world. it's a bummer!
― alpine static, Tuesday, 2 May 2023 18:19 (one year ago) link
not talking to morris, just saying it out loud.
― alpine static, Tuesday, 2 May 2023 18:20 (one year ago) link
sorry, i was distracted when i wrote that.
i guess what i'm trying to say is all it takes is one risk-averse lawyer or "VP of Legal" or whatever to make actual work a nightmare for the worker bees, and to wreck decent copy with a bunch of hedging bullshit. and, again, if you work somewhere like Conde Nast, it doesn't take long for everyone to defer to the legal advice because everyone's afraid of exposure, even if it's a relatively big org.
― alpine static, Tuesday, 2 May 2023 18:43 (one year ago) link
and by "everyone to defer to the legal advice" i mean your editor and your editor's boss, and so you really don't have much of a choice.
― alpine static, Tuesday, 2 May 2023 18:45 (one year ago) link
maybe being part of a legacy media org that's conde nast means you have more editorial oversight and are staffed up but uhhh probably not?
with the online news churn of wanting to be the first to post and the general layoffs in the sector it's painfully obvious people are the editors for their own writing (whatever that means) and if gannett and other newspaper orgs don't have editors look at things before publication I don't know why pitchfork would have that capacity
― mh, Wednesday, 3 May 2023 14:19 (one year ago) link
pitchfork has had the same news editor for like 15+ years
― jaymc, Wednesday, 3 May 2023 14:52 (one year ago) link
― mh, Wednesday, May 3, 2023 10:19 AM (thirty-four minutes ago)
i'll just tell you this is flatly wrong. conde & pitchfork are far more solvent than a local newspaper. they employ far less people, and the costs are much lower. pitchfork fact checks reviews and has for years. they don't have a fact checking *department* which means that sometimes things slip thru the cracks, but they do have the ability to put editorial processes in place that a lot of publications do not. *maybe* during the course of a busy day or on the weekends they let news writers post basic stuff (so and so debuts new song on tour) w/o editing, but anything of substance even if its just an aggregation is going to be read by at least one editor.
consider the fact that, despite the nits we (lovingly) pick in this thread, i can't remember the last time pitchfork has had an editorial scandal. not a bad score, or a misstated fact in a review, or a matter of opinion on the merit of a news story. i'm talking like, deleted articles, ppl getting fired etc. and they do real and often tricky reporting (i.e. win butler)
― J0rdan S., Wednesday, 3 May 2023 15:06 (one year ago) link
nice!
― mh, Wednesday, 3 May 2023 15:20 (one year ago) link
What about the Nick Sylvester, maker-upper incident?
― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, 4 May 2023 17:26 (one year ago) link
that was for the village voice but thanks for your input, snrub
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 4 May 2023 17:29 (one year ago) link
Yeah there hasn't really been a pitchfork scandal, the closest I could come up with was some weird Brent D review where he was telling some tall tale, maybe it was a Beastie boys thing?
The most scandalous thing about Pitchfork otherwise is some of the older reviews, for various reasons.
― omar little, Thursday, 4 May 2023 17:33 (one year ago) link
Brent made shit up about the PR firm Nasty Little Man and its president in his review of the Beastie Boys' To the 5 Boroughs:
what's up with that Brent D Beastie Boys review/farewell review?
― jaymc, Thursday, 4 May 2023 17:46 (one year ago) link
Pitchfork getting Chief Keef put in jail for violating his parole was like 11 years ago, but still more recent than the examples
― young sussy (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 4 May 2023 18:16 (one year ago) link
oh yeah that is a good one. kinda weird moment of pitchfork trying to be vice. but that was the ryan s era & no shade to him he created a legendary website and cashed out on it but i think there's a reason why conde was like, yeah let's get a professional in here to run this place
― J0rdan S., Thursday, 4 May 2023 18:18 (one year ago) link
2010 was when they said Ginger Spice looked like a [redacted word you def cannot say anymore]
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article contained language that was offensive. It has been removed.
― young sussy (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 4 May 2023 18:19 (one year ago) link
2015 was this hood classic that riled up both the chuds and the dirtbag leftists in a perfect storm
[Editor's note: An earlier version of this piece misstated the number of people of color who have appeared on Belle & Sebastian record sleeves; the reference has been removed and Pitchfork regrets the error.]
― young sussy (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 4 May 2023 18:21 (one year ago) link
But yeah, J0rd's right it really has been a hot minute since a good old fashioned p4k scandal.
Vice was still collecting wild Ls even throughout the interminable "no, no, you're thinking of the staff two years ago, we're good now actually" era
― young sussy (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 4 May 2023 18:23 (one year ago) link
A quick google of <"editor's note" pitchfork.com> turns up some interesting results, including a review of King Geedorah's Take Me to Your Leader (2003) that had previously "contained a phrase that did not meet current editorial standards and has been removed." The Wayback Machine shows that the phrase was "virgin-tight beats."
― jaymc, Thursday, 4 May 2023 18:50 (one year ago) link
😳
― maf you one two (maffew12), Thursday, 4 May 2023 18:54 (one year ago) link
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Thursday, 4 May 2023 19:07 (one year ago) link
genuine question: was pfork, in its original incarnation and general mission statement/m.o., kinda racist?
(it's an opinion question and my answer is yes.)
(and good for them if they've taken steps to change that.)
― my beard exists more than i do. (Austin), Thursday, 4 May 2023 19:19 (one year ago) link
I don’t think they thought they were, but …
― The Triumphant Return of Bernard & Stubbs (Raymond Cummings), Thursday, 4 May 2023 19:27 (one year ago) link
Yeah def. Healthy dose of the ol misogyny here and there too.
― omar little, Thursday, 4 May 2023 19:37 (one year ago) link
sub-question: was it just kinda standard rockism and i'm dense?
― my beard exists more than i do. (Austin), Thursday, 4 May 2023 19:44 (one year ago) link
They scrubbed a bunch of stuff so they probably agree with you
― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Thursday, 4 May 2023 19:52 (one year ago) link
Fucking WOW
[Huge Trigger Warning, transphobic]
https://web.archive.org/web/20090821143234/https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8036-the-illusion-of-safety/
― young sussy (Whiney G. Weingarten), Thursday, 4 May 2023 20:14 (one year ago) link
was gonna say, wayback machine and web.archive.org have a lot of the o_O reviews that were since purged
― Cthulhu Diamond Phillips (Neanderthal), Thursday, 4 May 2023 20:16 (one year ago) link
― my beard exists more than i do. (Austin), Thursday, May 4, 2023 12:44 PM (forty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink
It all kinda goes hand-in-hand a bit yeah?
they've scrubbed a bunch of shitty reviews but there are definitely reviews that wouldn't pass muster today that remain.
― omar little, Thursday, 4 May 2023 20:37 (one year ago) link
That Thrice review is absolutely deranged
i got less than a paragraph in— really fucked
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Thursday, 4 May 2023 21:37 (one year ago) link
wonder if it’s the same guy who is now a public defender and twitter guy in Virginia
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Thursday, 4 May 2023 21:39 (one year ago) link
it appears so
Indeed I was. During law school. I am not proud of it. My reviews were trash and I was an asshole to a lot of nice, creative people.— Brad Haywood (@BradleyRHaywood) November 4, 2022
― jaymc, Thursday, 4 May 2023 21:50 (one year ago) link
maybe i'm just being an asshole about it but i always imagined pfork authorities at the time encouraging that sort of thing.
"i am not proud of it" is very cringe for all involved. at least they own it. yeesh.
― my beard exists more than i do. (Austin), Thursday, 4 May 2023 22:17 (one year ago) link
Sounds like he’s saying he’s not proud of trashing records, in that tweet at least
― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Thursday, 4 May 2023 23:04 (one year ago) link
Yeah, for about a year. Then Ryan Schreiber fired me. For cause. The cause being that I sucked at writing about music.— Brad Haywood (@BradleyRHaywood) November 4, 2022
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 4 May 2023 23:09 (one year ago) link
at least he acknowledges it and is doing good work now
― Goose Bigelow, Fowl Gigolo (the table is the table), Friday, 5 May 2023 11:40 (one year ago) link
Don't worry, all this and more will be answered this summer in the fascinating journey into the mind of... https://www.mcdbooks.com/news/ryan-schreiber
― Position Position, Friday, 5 May 2023 13:54 (one year ago) link
jeez. ha, that webpage.. . . links to his weekly spotify playlist.
*wow* a playlist with Beach House and Mac DeMarco. *amazing*
― a (waterface), Friday, 5 May 2023 13:58 (one year ago) link
In my day Pitchforkers would come here to explain their errors
It wasn't so much advanced planning as one early, internal joke that turned out to be the thing we ended up going with. We are also constantly working to correct and curb our CMS errors but a computer error and a human error are different things.
Whether a reader, or loads of them, finds it lazy or gutless is another matter, of course.
― scottpl, Tuesday, July 22, 2008 10:24 AM (fourteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink
re: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/11617-partie-traumatic/
― INDEPENDENTS DAY BY STEVEN SPILBERG (President Keyes), Friday, 5 May 2023 18:38 (one year ago) link
I personally thought that was great though, ha ha
― Are You There God? It's a-Me, Mario (morrisp), Friday, 5 May 2023 18:53 (one year ago) link
"The ghost of late-’00s indie rock will haunt the dentist’s office." 😂
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/ed-sheeran-subtract/
― I can't tell if he's trolling or not (ilxor), Wednesday, 10 May 2023 14:59 (one year ago) link