pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

https://i.imgur.com/fPJcYrd.png

A can of orange White Claw has subtly disappeared, Kubrick-style

I’d be embarrassed to have to summarize a Rolling Stone puff piece about something this dumb, add that a related Instagram story “was viewed by Pitchfork,” and call it reporting.

i don't think anyone is claiming that's reporting

OK, I'd be embarrassed to put it in the News section of my music website

Time to find another beat then.

Good idea – I'm gonna turn the tables and start a blog that ONLY rewrites articles about imagined beefs that stans are tweeting about, so ppl will scratch their heads when actual news slips in.

(only beefs that have already been confirmed not to exist, of course)

Onlybeefs is a good website idea

Here’s an article that makes almost comically liberal use of notorious weasel words “allegedly” and “claimed” (a Pitchfork favorite). It’s really irritating, if you care about news writing.

(I found it through a link in another article that mentions these guys’ “alleged experience”).

In the interest of being Fair and Balanced, I thought this was a good piece.

lol they are covering this like watergate

https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/an-interview-with-the-teenager-who-livestreamed-frank-oceans-coachella-set/#intcid=_pitchfork-bottom-recirc_66f1f5ef-762b-423d-ab66-94394752db76_cral2-2_fallback_popular4-1

I got there at about 9 a.m. and waited in the sun for three hours till doors opened at noon. Then I sprinted as fast as I could to the barricade, and me and my two friends sat there for the next 11 hours.

So basically she waited the length of a flight to Australia.

Today's Jessie Ware review needs a few more hyperlinks, IMO

Here’s an article that makes almost comically liberal use of notorious weasel words “allegedly” and “claimed” (a Pitchfork favorite). It’s really irritating, if you care about news writing.

(I found it through a link in another article that mentions these guys’ “alleged experience”).

― morrisp.fandom.com (morrisp), Thursday, April 20, 2023 10:39 AM (one week ago)

the reason why this happens is bcuz the potential legal exposure if you don't properly couch every claim (multi million dollar lawsuit that doesn't even need to have a solid legal framework) is not worth the upside you get when you publish a basic news blog (four-to-five digit pageview totals). i agree w/ you that it's annoying to read but the economics of the web publishing industry combined w/ the litigious attacks on the press in the last handful of years is why news bloggers are forced to use words like "allegedly" and "claimed" a comical amount of time. take it up w/ peter thiel

They're owned by Condé Nast.

I don't think Condé Nast wants to fight multi-million dollar lawsuits over a four paragraph blog post either, even if they're privately held and not accountable to public shareholders

You can just throw in some qualifiers and have the vague legal sense that you're weakening possible legal action

I don't think Condé Nast wants to fight multi-million dollar lawsuits over a four paragraph blog post either, even if they're privately held and not accountable to public shareholders

You can just throw in some qualifiers and have the vague legal sense that you're weakening possible legal action

― mh, Tuesday, May 2, 2023 11:41 AM (forty-eight minutes ago)

ding ding ding

Flexing his skills pays off in lines like, “No security, my brothers gon’ step, Will Ferrell” but also flounders: “My homeboy just beat cancer/I call my ex, no answer.” You win some, you lose some!

lol at this point Paper Bag rap lines are lyrically lyrical shit

xp 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?

Who cares? Why do you care so much about this damn website?

It's also possible that Pitchfork's writers are younger, less experienced with legal niceties, thus to use more awkward qualifiers.

to=the

Why do you care so much about this damn website?

Well I read it regularly; I find it to be very poorly edited for a site owned by a major media company; and this is a thread for discussing that. I'm happy to stop bumping the thread if it's irritating (though I thought that's what the thread was for).

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.

haha i don't think morrisp should be the fall guy for 21 years of ilx nitpicking pitchfork

My local newspaper, around for a century, fired several more copy editors yesterday. It's been a problem for two decades.

Allegedly

, claimed Soto.

lol

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.

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

Thanks, that’s interesting/thoughtful (and yeah 100% agree on that RS screw-up… I’m actually super not into RS, for various reasons).

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!

not talking to morris, just saying it out loud.

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.

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.

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

pitchfork has had the same news editor for like 15+ years

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, 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)

nice!

What about the Nick Sylvester, maker-upper incident?

that was for the village voice but thanks for your input, snrub

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.

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?

Pitchfork getting Chief Keef put in jail for violating his parole was like 11 years ago, but still more recent than the examples

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

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.

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.]

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