We all know what Maura Johnston (music editor over at our sister publication The Village Voice) is talking about in this Daily Swarm piece; we deal with all these problems daily here at Heard Mentality. But I think this conversation with Eric Ducker outlines all these challenges in a concise way that we feel obliged to refer to it as an explanation/apology/qualifier for the way things in the [music] blogosphere (I.e., please understand that some things are beyond our control). After the jump, a Cliff's Notes version of the most pertinent points (although the whole interview is wonderful, read it here.)
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On how music writers almost always need to do more research (but never have enough time to do so):
MJ: I also think that the nature of the machine these days almost requires the quick-and-dirty approach: output is paramount, quality is not – unless you're talking about a headline's SEO quality.
On whether writers of posts laden with do it “purposefully”:
MJ: I honestly can't tell. Part of me wants to think that they are because of every Internet writer's innate knowledge of traffic being a “good” thing. But then so many of them are just so poorly executed and tossed-off. It's like the worst parodies of blogging put forth for people to consume.
On knowing that chasing hits does not equal good writing:
MJ: The way of writing about music has just fundamentally shifted over the past ten years, and exponentially so over the past 18 months. Aggregation is crucial; content doesn't have to be insightful to “perform,” or even factually accurate. Getting retweeted by BreakingNews or someone with hundreds of thousands of followers is a sign that you're doing a good job. It almost doesn't matter what is in your story.
A story on a musician isn't validated just because it's published…in Esquire:
MJ: [The Lana Del Rey pieces in T Magazine and Esquire, Nicki Minaj in New York, Kreayshawn in GQ] all came from a place where certain suppositions were made about music and culture and their relationship. There was no process of fact checking, it seemed, beyond “Oh, I heard this at a cocktail party once.” The GQ piece had a bit about the Cooking Dance being created “for white people,” which I guess was supposed to be a joke but which was disheartening to anyone who knows about Lil B. The treatments of the subjects – all women! – were pretty superficial. Tom Junod's Lana Del Rey piece for Esquire was just vile, sexist shit that didn't belong on a followed-by-zero-people Tumblr, let alone in an Ellie-winning magazine.
On what to do with music journalism:
MJ: More insightful stuff might not be at the pace of your bigger aggregators, but articles that say something different and new, or that expose an under-heralded act, need to come back into fashion. It might not get the slew of readers that a hit piece or a quickie obit does, but it'll help elevate the discourse…I know Pitchfork gets shit on a lot, and it is by no means perfect, but I really think that they and the new Spin are doing it right: getting smart people to be excited about music. Because being excited about music is still an infectious, wonderful thing!
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