Forum on the future of journalism today!

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.

Why Journalism Now?

Yesterday I had one of the great honors of my professional life: I got to introduce the launch of a Journalism major at Loyola Marymount University. It was a momentous day to be talking about the newsgathering profession, as I acknowledged in my opening remarks before Los Angeles Times columnist Steven Lopez took the stage and inspired the approximately 200 audience members — most of them students — with his stories and advice. Afterward, he and HLN anchor/CNN writer Carol Costello discussed the state of the news industry, sometimes heatedly. A day later, when CNN’s reporting of a confrontation between two women and Senator Jeff Flake apparently marked another turn in this dramatic story, my comments about the convergence of journalism and feminism seem more appropriate than ever.

This is an extraordinary day. I have to acknowledge the pedagogical irony that we journalism professors constantly tell our students they must stay on top of the news, and then we have asked you to be here in this room instead of glued to your screens or radios. We didn’t know, obviously, when we picked this day what would happen. I promise we will only keep you for an hour, and then we can all get back to events in Washington. I also want us all to keep in mind how emotionally difficult today’s hearings can be for many of us. We talk a lot about trigger warnings in academia. Today was explosive for many of us, not because we are snowflakes, but because we are human beings. So please treat each other with especial kindness and empathy this difficult week.

I was going to start my introduction with the question, Why journalism now? But today’s hearing answers that question for me. Two of the most important forces in my life — journalism and feminism — have come together to challenge the citadels of power. From Gretchen Carlson to The New York Times, Times Up to the Washington Post, and MeToo to The New Yorker, citizens and journalists have exposed abuses of power. The fruits of that labor — and it is labor, hard, harrowing, exhausting work — are playing out in the senate as we speak. And the attacks on the media — attacks that have become deadly in our own country — are also being renewed right now, in DC. Let me assure you: LMU Journalism is not training the enemies of the people. We are teaching the reporters, editors, videographers, photographers, reviewers, anchors, columnists and podcasters of tomorrow how to inform the people.

LMU decided to launch a journalism major because young people asked for it. Students enrolled here asked for it and students applying here asked for it. Indeed, though we officially became a major only this fall, we have almost 50 students enrolled already. They asked not because they are looking for a sure way to make a living. I’m here to tell you right now that you don’t get rich being a reporter. They asked because they care about the world that they are inheriting, and they know that journalism is a way to make that world a better place. They understand that a free and open press is fundamental to the functioning of our democratic republic, and they want to make sure that press presents and represents them. We are a Journalism program, housed in a department with a tradition of rhetorical analysis, in a college dedicated to understanding humanity, at a university committed to personal and cultural transformation: Telling people’s stories is our mission.

Wikipedia Day Panel

I’ll be on a panel addressing the horror of “fake news” and “alternative facts” at Wikipedia Day at the Ace Hotel Feb. 18. For more information, check the Wikipedia page, of course.

Wearing New Hat

I’m pleased to announce that I am the interim Director of Journalism  at Loyola Marymount University. I am taking over from Dr. Linda Bannister, who built this program from scratch. We now have more than 200 students signed up for our Journalism Minor and Certificate, and a faculty that includes former Time magazine staff writer Kate Pickert. I am honored to be in charge of this program and indebted to Linda’s great work. In keeping with the university’s mission of social justice and education of the whole person, LMU students focus on service-based community journalism, with training in new media and, befitting a program based in an English department, an emphasis on storytelling. You can follow us on Twitter at LMUJour.

Millenials and the Media: Why One Editor Quit Her Dream Job

Devon Maloney wrote a very brave, controversial article about why she quit her job as music editor of the LA Times after four months. She brings up issues that are central to the chauvinism of music criticism, the lard-ass-ness of legacy journalism, and the privileged passion of Millenials. I would love to hear readers’ take on Devon’s story.

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.