katherine as someone who has admired your writing, particularly on TSJ, I have to tell you that the person on that page has no clue. Even when I think your opinions are different to mine I find your work stylish and brimming with a sense of personality, please do not let this become A Thing in your life
― boxedjoy, Sunday, 28 May 2017 09:00 (six years ago) link
You're a brilliant writer. Sorry about all this shit you're going through.
― sbahnhof, Sunday, 28 May 2017 11:27 (six years ago) link
Katherine, if it's any consolation, a lot of the writers who have been "ripped" regularly write for The New York Times and the New Yorker and whatever, so it's not exactly a death sentence
― Jay Elettronica Viva (Whiney G. Weingarten), Sunday, 28 May 2017 14:08 (six years ago) link
Normally when I tweet at people, they just block me or send GIFs of black women waving goodbye.
Fuck this guy for about twenty different reasons (not the least of which is being wrong about your writing).
― some sad trombone Twilight Zone shit (cryptosicko), Sunday, 28 May 2017 19:43 (six years ago) link
Probably for another thread, but I'm astonished at what people say to each other online that they'd never (a lot of assuming here) say face-to-face. It may just be my age (37) but my online "personality" is the exact same as my real-life self, for better or worse.
― Rod Steel (musicfanatic), Sunday, 28 May 2017 23:32 (six years ago) link
RipFork taught me to be more thoughtful when spending roughly 20 minutes reviewing an album -- based off one skimmed listen -- just after being informed of a death in the family.
Imagine thinking of starting that website, having the time to do so, then actually following through for several years of your (presumably) adult life.
Whitest Words: cloying, oeuvre, orthodoxy, affectation, ubiquity, overwrought, incongruence, authorial, Sapphic, relegated, mimicryfuck this dude for real― condaleeza spice (The Reverend), Monday, January 4, 2010 6:54 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
fuck this dude for real
― condaleeza spice (The Reverend), Monday, January 4, 2010 6:54 AM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Guy who operates a music-criticism mockery website to Roy Ayers: "You sound white."
― Andy K, Monday, 29 May 2017 18:17 (six years ago) link
http://www.cision.com/us/2017/06/jessica-hopper-mtv-news/
June 22, 2017/in Consumer & Lifestyle, Media Updates /by Cision Media Research
Jessica Hopper has left her role as editorial director of music for MTV News to join Spotify. She joined the network in 2016 after serving as senior editor for Pitchfork.
― curmudgeon, Friday, 23 June 2017 19:17 (six years ago) link
http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/7849323/mtv-news-restructuring-shift-video
"MTV is restructuring once again. This time, the changes are focused on the MTV News department, which according to a source with knowledge of the situation is closing the chapter on what many saw as a bold and fascinating experiment in longform editorial. Multiple sources have told Billboard that layoffs are expected as early as today."
― The Harsh Tutelage of Michael McDonald (Raymond Cummings), Wednesday, 28 June 2017 20:59 (six years ago) link
Yup. All the writers pretty much just got let go in a heap.
― Ned Raggett, Wednesday, 28 June 2017 21:05 (six years ago) link
lol the video pivot. "how can we waste as much money as possible?"
― maura, Thursday, 29 June 2017 00:54 (six years ago) link
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/IB4kTLN15y0/maxresdefault.jpg
― the ghost of markers, Thursday, 29 June 2017 01:40 (six years ago) link
Thank you, no.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 29 June 2017 01:47 (six years ago) link
utterly bizarre that someone —or many people— thought that Grantland should be recreated at MTV.com in the first place.
― veronica moser, Thursday, 29 June 2017 02:29 (six years ago) link
Maybe so, but a lot of sites were thinking along similar lines, wanting HuffPo, Buzzfeed numbers and deciding OK, let's hire a bunch of writers to write a bunch of tangy articles and put blisteringly clicky headlines all over them.. To work as a model you need a massive volume of articles per month/week/day. I think it can work but the payoff isn't immediate and quality control becomes a real problem
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Thursday, 29 June 2017 06:58 (six years ago) link
CLRVYNT is dead. I wrote one article for them - an interview with Kreator's Mille Petrozza, published in January. They never paid me for it.
― grawlix (unperson), Thursday, 29 June 2017 11:42 (six years ago) link
let's hire a bunch of writers to write a bunch of tangy articles and put blisteringly clicky headlines all over them
that wasn't mtv's or grantland's strategy at all.
― fact checking cuz, Thursday, 29 June 2017 16:51 (six years ago) link
it was part of mtv's strategy -- the grantland-y stuff (which was always overstated IMO, The Ringer is a better fit) got all the press but a fairly significant part of what they actually published was exactly that
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 29 June 2017 17:42 (six years ago) link
at least 50% of the actual content was stuff like this (and I realize pretty much every music site operates this way, but): http://www.mtv.com/news/3020995/jersey-shore-team-meatball-snooki-deena-sleepover/
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 29 June 2017 17:49 (six years ago) link
sorry to go off-current-topic, but i've never read one of those "this album turns 20 today" pieces ... are they usually interviews w/ the artist? personal essays about how great the album is and how it affected the writer? some sort of "let's put this album in the context of 1997" look-back? a combo of these, or something else?
― alpine static, Thursday, 29 June 2017 17:56 (six years ago) link
the latter two, usually
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 29 June 2017 17:56 (six years ago) link
it depends on the outlet and the access
― maura, Thursday, 29 June 2017 17:57 (six years ago) link
I've read good ones and terrible ones, depending on the outlet and writer and, importantly, editor.
― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, 29 June 2017 18:11 (six years ago) link
The stable of writers they assembled was outstanding, but I agree there was always a disconnect between the brand and the content. There was always a sense of "why am I reading a longform personal essay on MTV News?"
It's a shame the whole experiment couldn't have just been ported over to like a Rolling Stone.com, where it would have made more sense, and where the youth and diversity of online writers would have offered a nice corrective to the magazine's historic biases
― Evan R, Thursday, 29 June 2017 18:18 (six years ago) link
i'd so much rather read an artist (and peripherally involved ppl) talking about a 20-year-old album, plus some writer-provided context of the time ... than the one i put in the middle.
anyway, thanks y'all. appreciate it.
― alpine static, Thursday, 29 June 2017 18:31 (six years ago) link
mostly I'm just exhausted with the same old "hire 20-22-year-olds, possibly as permalancers, lay them off as 23-24-year-olds" churn being celebrated as a win for youth or social justice or anything like that. conditions are never as rosy as the puff pieces claim -- to take a non-music example, a lot has come out in recent months about the less-than-ideal editorial process and pay rate at Teen Vogue.
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 29 June 2017 18:36 (six years ago) link
Being a writer sucks. Being a writer has always sucked. My life is defined by two competing quotes:
"No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money" - Samuel Johnson"I write only because I cannot stop" - Heinrich von Kleist
― grawlix (unperson), Thursday, 29 June 2017 18:41 (six years ago) link
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, June 29, 2017 2:36 PM (forty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
at the very least I hope Lauren Duca is making a decent living for dragging Tucker Carlson.
― evol j, Thursday, 29 June 2017 19:29 (six years ago) link
anyway, between this and the new york times' copy editors it has been a thoroughly depressing week for media (also known as a week for media)
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Thursday, 29 June 2017 19:41 (six years ago) link
this is...... extensive http://www.spin.com/featured/the-mtv-news-experiment/
― austinb, Friday, 30 June 2017 01:33 (six years ago) link
yeah, from time to time I worry that I am being overly paranoid/anxious about the state of the media, that I'm just projecting my own ~*quarterlife anxieties*~ and then I read things like this
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Friday, 30 June 2017 01:53 (six years ago) link
also, I don't know the benefits situation, and I know the timing probably has more to do with the fiscal year than anything -- but if these positions came with any sort of health insurance (some permalance/temp jobs do) it's the icing on the cake to lay everyone off just as the Republican Party is about to get rid of it
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Friday, 30 June 2017 02:06 (six years ago) link
“There’s this cycle that happens, that I was a part of. Someone gets the idea that they want editorial, and then a couple editors who all know the other editors are like ‘Come here, the faucet is on’,” Suarez said of the state of the industry. “And everyone runs to that faucet and it attracts the attention of higher-ups who realize there’s too much money coming out and shut it down. Then somebody you bring to your faucet gets their own faucet, and so you run over there.”
otm
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, 30 June 2017 06:57 (six years ago) link
yup
― maura, Friday, 30 June 2017 12:53 (six years ago) link
That Spin article deserves it's own thread.
― Loud guitars shit all over "Bette Davis Eyes" (NYCNative), Friday, 30 June 2017 14:12 (six years ago) link
just further validates my conviction that Chance is corny af.
― evol j, Friday, 30 June 2017 14:16 (six years ago) link
spin made me take out a negative sentence i wrote about mtv in a review once. it was the best sentence!
― scott seward, Friday, 30 June 2017 15:39 (six years ago) link
i should find that column about pitchfork that jessica asked me to write that pitchfork wouldn't publish in their magazine. in retrospect though, i didn't really want to write a column about pitchfork. but, like samuel johnson, i can always use the money.
― scott seward, Friday, 30 June 2017 15:42 (six years ago) link
is journalistic "freedom" and "integrity" really a thing now though? especially on the internet. i don't really expect it. there are people with money and there is what they want to do with that money.
― scott seward, Friday, 30 June 2017 16:05 (six years ago) link
a thing that wasn't mentioned in the Spin article (I'm sure a lot wasn't) is how much vitriol MTV News writers got, particularly if a piece leaned progressive or against consensus, and yet Kings of Leon gets to spike a writer's story over "plays like an imprint of the last five years of music—neither a return to Kings of Leon’s svelte roots nor a reinvention worth investing in."
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Friday, 30 June 2017 20:06 (six years ago) link
(as far as chance someone on twitter -- david drake maybe? -- had suggested the reason he's "the face of this" so to speak is because of his label situation, or relative lack thereof)
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Friday, 30 June 2017 20:09 (six years ago) link
"Similarly, I couldn’t be too upset to hear that the recent “woke” iteration of MTV News was coming to an end, both because, like literally everyone else on the Internets, I had no use for the site, and also because, come to find out, it was wildly corrupt."
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/byroncrawford/issues/i-m-glad-they-re-cleaning-house-at-mtv-news-63286
― JB, Friday, 30 June 2017 20:15 (six years ago) link
Sargent must not read Infowars.
how is jordan going to recover from this burn
― sick, fucking funny, and well tasty (katherine), Friday, 30 June 2017 20:15 (six years ago) link
I have a lot I can write about this but i won't because you all know it already. I will say though that I worked for an outfit that frequently found itself trying to square the circle MTV News did; i.e. it fashioned itself an objective voice on music but relied on deep linkages with outlets that basically exist to promote product. So you'd run into situations where an album gets keelhauled in a review and the CMS has badged it "album of the week" or something - just nonsensical for the audience, yet all perfectly rational from an organizational and back-end POV. i can't get mad at musicians, reps, labels etc deciding not to work with an organization that slates them, i mean it's ridiculous. You guys hate my album yet I'm a featured guest on some show of yours? Playing the songs you say you hate? Anyway in my case it was always an uncomfortable fit and in the end that faucet got turned off.
― illegal economic migration (Tracer Hand), Friday, 30 June 2017 20:20 (six years ago) link
who else burned out this year
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Thursday, 23 November 2017 17:07 (six years ago) link
It's high time I admitted to myself I don't write about music any more. I contributed to a single group piece this year. A couple of times I got the urge to express some thoughts and feelings about certain albums or gigs I attended, but just couldn't face the idea of staying up til all hours outside of my day job to write them
― FREEZE! FYI! (dog latin), Friday, 24 November 2017 16:19 (six years ago) link
No burnout, but I tend towards just aiming at a few stories per month. And I’m fine with that.
― Ned Raggett, Friday, 24 November 2017 18:00 (six years ago) link
I feel kinda the same way as Ned. I'm really enjoying writing about music, but that's because I have a monthly column, the occasional feature assignment (some of which, particularly over the last year, have been of the last-minute "somebody big died" type), a review here and there, and...that's about it. I've also started podcasting interviews with artists I admire, because I love doing interviews but hate transcribing them, and that's been great.
― grawlix (unperson), Friday, 24 November 2017 18:06 (six years ago) link
Unless it's an interview, music writing in the Spotify era is pretty much useless anyway, so I wouldn't worry yourselves about it.
― Gholdfish Killah (Turrican), Friday, 24 November 2017 18:12 (six years ago) link
what a cool original opinion
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Friday, 24 November 2017 18:14 (six years ago) link
anyway i took myself down to 1-2 pieces per month which started out all right and then for some reason became horrible. just told an editor to reassign something i was supposed to write this week which felt horrible but needed to happen
― ToddBonzalez (BradNelson), Friday, 24 November 2017 18:18 (six years ago) link