pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

also i truly believe Fred has been misunderstood here lol

whatever other considerations need to be made (ryan's opinion etc).

aka the wenner proviso

I believe she is MORE THAN QUALIFIED to do what she did, and it SEEMS LIKE IT'S tokenistic because P4K didn't trust her to do all parts of the job.

xp rjann

personally i think fred could still stand to learn when to back down

dude multiple people have literally told you in varying degrees of detail how things work for writers and scores and who does what, at this point anything else in your perception is your own

and that his reading is just this side of too cynical and that it has probably led to this "misunderstanding"

xp

The editorial process is that a very white, male group decides a statement, and then finds someone to write that statement. In this case a white/male group decided a statement about a black woman, then hired a black woman to write that statement. The solution isn't to not criticizing that hiring, it's to diversify the editorial process. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there doesn't seem to be a single black woman on the editorial staff according to the masthead (and my googling skills).

i guess where i'll say your thinking gets real swervy is assuming that rahawa didn't pitch this herself

Correct me if I'm wrong, but

x-post: Well, she's insinuating that she didn't choose the score and that it wasn't bnm'd.

The solution isn't to not criticizing that hiring, it's to diversify the editorial process.

you're also, I think, making the assumption that a more diverse editorial staff would necessarily have awarded Janelle a higher score, which......

Um, no.

i mean she's right, it's a high profile release with potential for bnm, and that's when editorial steps in to help determine the score (please reread j0rd's post). but the actual writing is her statement

xp

fred you're just getting relentlessly misunderstood in this thread and it's so hard for me to say why, does it have something to do with the clarity of your ideas / how much or little they have to do with reality

xxp No I think he’s saying that a more diverse editorial staff would have allowed the writer to pick the score in this one instance?! which...

can we move on from that?

fine with me

fred you're just getting relentlessly misunderstood in this thread and it's so hard for me to say why, does it have something to do with the clarity of your ideas / how much or little they have to do with reality

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), 1. maj 2018 19:39 (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

English as a Second Language, I know. But the will to go 'omg, how dare you, YOU'RE the bigot!' whenever something is criticized is strong, as also shown with Simon insinuating that I think only black women would like Janelle Monae because I said Pitchfork should diversify their editorial staff.

look from a strictly literal perspective it's true that the writers don't pick the score... but then again, writers can't actually finally decide on *anything* anywhere. editors publish stories... at the end of the day they can make the stories say whatever they want. this dynamic has existed for the entire history of journalism essentialy. it doesn't take some giant stretch of your imagination to apply it to the process of assigning a decimal score to an album.

i'm just happy they didn't dig up Brent DiCrescenzo for this review. i liked it!

isn't that making an assumption that we all think about journalism as much as journalists do? xpost

English as a Second Language, I know.

this is *not* what i meant, i'm so sorry. (lol i guess you got me there)

where your thinking falls apart is assuming she's not a well-known writer that the editors probably know -- know personally, I'm pretty sure -- and whose work they admire

This is just a special situation, because 'Dirty Computer' might be the biggest pop-album ever explicitly about being a black queer woman. And there's a disconnect between the text and the score/bnm, we noticed it, the writer has pointed it out. And it's a disconnect between input from a black woman, and input from a very white/male editorial staff. Call it a coincidence, whatever, but it looks bad. This is not good, this might be normal procedure everywhere, but then that's an indictment of editorial practices everywhere. Every newsroom in the world needs to be diversified, frankly.

Again, katherine, I'm not assuming that, and no matter what, it has no impact on what I'm saying.

English as a Second Language, I know.

this is *not* what i meant, i'm so sorry. (lol i guess you got me there)

― flamenco drop (BradNelson), 1. maj 2018 19:49 (four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Lol, no, I really mean that I'm aware I struggle more than the rest of you to get my point across because I speak the language less perfectly.

your exact words are "they wanted an outside (black, female) perspective"

Pitchfork should remove all bylines and just credit reviews to "A. Whiteman" or "A. Blacklady" from now on.

This is just a special situation, because 'Dirty Computer' might be the biggest pop-album ever explicitly about being a black queer woman. And there's a disconnect between the text and the score/bnm, we noticed it, the writer has pointed it out. And it's a disconnect between input from a black woman, and input from a very white/male editorial staff. Call it a coincidence, whatever, but it looks bad. This is not good, this might be normal procedure everywhere, but then that's an indictment of editorial practices everywhere. Every newsroom in the world needs to be diversified, frankly.

Again, katherine, I'm not assuming that, and no matter what, it has no impact on what I'm saying.

― Frederik B, Tuesday, May 1, 2018 1:53 PM (forty-nine seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Grace Jones reading this Fredrick B post

http://s3.amazonaws.com/quietus_production/images/articles/15230/grace-jones-nightclubbing_1399904420_crop_560x550.0.jpg

your exact words are "they wanted an outside (black, female) perspective"

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), 1. maj 2018 19:55 (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh, jfc, this is incredible. I wrote:

Rahawa Haile has no other bylines on Pitchfork, so it seems like the site specifically wanted an outside (black, female) perspective on the album. To then not let her decide the score makes the whole thing seem pretty suspect. A lack of trust in her judgment apart from her identity.

― Frederik B, 1. maj 2018 18:42 (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've already once explained:

I wrote 'it seems like', I was specifically criticizing the appearance that pitchfork has created.

― Frederik B, 1. maj 2018 19:11 (forty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And then you're quoting me out of context, when I've specifically pointed out that context. I mean, I know I speak English as a second language, but you're clearly not reading what I write in good faith. How much clearer could I write that the 'IT SEEMS LIKE' part was important?

Hey, speaking of reading in good faith, maybe you shouldn’t yell at people about “bullshit fake outrage” even if you think they’re misreading you.

your exact words are "they wanted an outside (black, female) perspective"

to be specific -- and I apologize if this is a wording issue, but it doesn't seem to be -- you seem to be implying here that the only reason a black woman would be commissioned to write for a website for the first time is because she is "an outside perspective" to them and not because she is a colleague of editors who know her and/or her work. I know this is a thing that happens elsewhere in journalism, but it is a very weird and suspect accusation to make about a writer who is both well-known in general and in music writing communities specifically, and who just finished a major, time-consuming project.

(also imagine this post being written while drowning in the deluge of irony of being frustrated about being misinterpreted, yet being perfectly certain of others' "bullshit fake outrage") -- I guess

post got cut off, supposed to be "I guess xp"

i don't think this will be fully solved until katherine posts that she knows Rahawa four or five more times

I'd like to point out it's a good review she wrote.

xpost i mean, you're RIGHT, obviously, but it's still funny

I was actually talking about Jeremy there but thanks

unless suddenly I am the reviews editor of Pitchfork, which would be news to me

You continue to misinterpret me after I've explained it like ten times. It's pretty hard not to think it's deliberate. No, I'm not saying that pitchfork only hired her because she is a black woman, I'm saying they've created the appearance that they've only hired her because she is a black woman. The disconnect between her text and their score makes it seem as if they don't trust her reviewing skills, MAKING IT SEEM that they only hired her because she is a black woman.

Just spitballing here, if hiring a WOC is bad because it makes Pitchfork look like they tokenizing WOC, the alternative should be ... what exactly?

Just pointing out that I've already answered that upthread.

I'm sorry, English is my first language I'm still learning how to speak Huge Dumbass

they've created the appearance that they've only hired her because she is a black woman

citation needed that anyone at all, anywhere, thinks this

i would think pitchfork changing its policy for one specific writer to avoid the appearance of what fred is talking about would be more demeaning/condescending/tokenizing than exactly what happened, which is she said she wasn't responsible for the final score/BNM status, something I've said publicly in the past about my own pieces there

but yes i agree they should hire more black people

to be specific -- and I apologize if this is a wording issue, but it doesn't seem to be -- you seem to be implying here that the only reason a black woman would be commissioned to write for a website for the first time is because she is "an outside perspective" to them and not because she is a colleague of editors who know her and/or her work.

― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Tuesday, May 1, 2018 2:10 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think it doesn't take that much to imagine that a bunch of clueless white editors could hire a WOC writer just to score woke points for the marketing team. it happens, it happened, and it will happen again. maybe it's not the specific case of Rahawa, not everyone is buddy buddy with lots of music journalism to know the specifics of her career and her relationships with publications, but making an assumption that sometimes some privileged white males hire WOC for the wrong reasons, is grounded in some realities. It happens all the time in the film industry, for example.

yes, I already said I realize that is a thing that happens, frequently, in journalism, but it's shitty to make that one's default assumption

I'm sorry, English is my first language I'm still learning how to speak Huge Dumbass

― we æt so many shimripl (Whiney G. Weingarten), 1. maj 2018 20:20 (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, this was definitely so cryptically written: The solution isn't to not criticizing that hiring, it's to diversify the editorial process.

gotcha

xpost

I guess there is a grammar error in there, but still.

i think it doesn't take that much to imagine that a bunch of clueless white editors could hire a WOC writer just to score woke points for the marketing team.

You really think the **marketing team** of the place that considers "millennial males" it's core gives a fuck about "woke points"? It would probably be MORE profitable if Pitchfork catered to the Very Online White Male and the many sponsors that don't want to deal with music that might have an f-word