Stick a fork in it

The news that Pitchfork is being swallowed by GQ dealt a body blow to many of us for multiple reasons. My heart goes out to those able journalists now looking for work in a market increasingly flooded with workers from other recent layoffs, such as those at Bandcamp. The shrinking of platforms for professional critical discourse and news about music is alarming for artists and labels as well as those who work for websites. For me, the most sickening aspect is the fact a music publication has been consumed by a men’s journal. This has been a huge part of the problem of music journalism for decades; it’s one of the reasons Rolling Stone has always covered women so little and poorly – in the ‘90s when I freelanced for Stone, we were always told that it was a men’s magazine; Wenner Media sibling publication Us was for women. P4k started off being a rather typical nerdy indie boy blog, but it rose above those snarky beginnings to become a platform for diverse types of music and writers. I loved the way it reckoned with its own past by reevaluating its reviews. The fact that a female POC, Puja Patel, has lost her admirable run as editor in chief is a stab in the guts – that the knife was wielded by another woman, Anna Wintour, sickening. (For the record, I never wrote for Pitchfork and never felt a part of its community, but still I grieve.)

That said, I discussed the news with the 14 undergraduate students in my music journalism class on Wednesday. Only two of them said they ever pay attention to Pitchfork, and all they really know about the site is its rating system – and they aren’t crazy about that. They see it as arrogant, judgmental. Instead this group of dedicated music lovers prefers to find out about new releases through Spotify, social media, and friends and family. (One student reads The New York Times, bless her heart.)

This is a small survey sampling, but it confirms what many of us know: Forget the death of newspapers and magazines (that’s old news about old news), we are now in the end of the era of websites and blogs. Young people crowd source their news, information, entertainment, and opinions. As one student said, she would rather figure out whether she is going to like an artist by reading a bunch of different people’s comments about them, rather than one person’s opinion. And of course, consumers don’t need critics to tell them what records to buy any more: they can hear them themselves on apps and YouTube.

This is all very disturbing for critics, journalists, and media companies, and it’s also bad news for artists – criminally underpaid by Spotify – and the music industry. The only comfort this offers to the talented people at Pitchfork is that they should realize it’s not that they weren’t doing good and important work. It’s just, well, the times, they are a changing. Again.

Jessica Hopper on “Golden” Girl Critics

“There’s been a lot of discussion about the title—in part because I wanted it to be provocative, I wanted there to be a conversation because there are dozens of women who should have collections by now and the roadblocks and arguments about why those books seemingly cannot exist are ridiculous. We are in a golden age for women in cultural criticism right now, but we are told again and again that somehow, we don’t meet the criteria of publishable. That only Chuck Klosterman gets to be in the clubhouse. And that was and is frustrating”

I love this quote from Jessica Hopper in the current issue of Pop Matters, in an interview by the wonderful David Chiu. She’s talking about her book The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic, of course. I also noticed for the first time today that six years ago, Jesssica wrote a great comment about Rock She Wrote (which David also nicely shouts out in this story) for Amazon. It’s still up. (Though please don’t purchase that Plexus edition of the book; it’s an illegal import. Buy a used one from a mom and pop bookstore instead, please. And yes, we are trying to get it back into print.)

The Feminine Critique Redux

Twenty-three years ago The Village Voice published an article called “The Feminine Critique: The Secret History of Women and Rock Journalism.” It was the detailed result of more than a year’s worth of research I conducted, looking for my predecessors and my peers, interviewing such incredible critics as Ellen Willis, Danyel Smith, Ann Powers, Carola Dibbell, Karen Schoemer, Patricia Kennealy-Morrison, etc. The article became the basis for my first book, Rock She Wrote: Women Write About Rock, Pop, and Rap, coedited by the inestimable Powers. That book is suddenly in the spotlight, thanks to Pitchfork editor Jessica Hopper’s generous namecheck of it in the dedication to her pointedly titled anthology The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic. Anwen Crawford also mentions our book in her New Yorker piece today, and even manages to include my name, unlike another recent lame article I won’t deign to mention. (You don’t say my name, I won’t say yours.) Crawford’s article goes over so much of the same terrain as “The Feminine Critique,” I wanted to laugh and cry. Finally, this issue is getting the mainstream spotlight it deserves. Sadly, it remains an issue.

I took a lot of shit when my article came out. The (male) rock crit establishment didn’t appreciate it. I was blacklisted by at least one major music magazine. Critics whose work I deeply admired made belittling comments. I felt like a whistleblower. On the one hand, “The Feminist Critique” led to my book-publishing career. On the other, to this day, I think I was forever cast as the Feminist Troublemaker, my career tainted as I was just getting out of the gate. Something writer Leslie Berman told me back then still haunts me: “The only reason that those of us who stopped doing criticism may feel bitter or uncomfortable about it has something to do with the fact that men had a different way of stopping. They were able to stop and recognize it as a choice, as a career move.”

I hope and pray that Crawford and Hopper don’t have to go through what Berman and I did. I’m glad they’re acknowledging the women who came before them. I write a lot about women pioneers, because I feel they are too often under-appreciated. I must be getting old, because I feel like one of them now. I’m glad to see the incredible settlements our progeny are building. And yet, I feel a little sad, looking out from my dusty door frame, just grateful when they remember to say my name.

Oh, and about that title: Willis and Ellen Sander both had collections of their writing published during their lifetimes, though Willis’s included the important political journalism she did after she grew out of rock criticism. Patricia has self-published her work; I highly recommend you check it out.