[Intro Music: “Tom Petty’s gone(but tell him i asked for him)” by Kurt Vile]
SYDNEY FENER: Music nerds and journalism geeks alike were devastated to hear the news this month that GQ had acquired Pitchfork, a prominent outlet for music coverage. On January 21st, cultural juggernaut Condé Nast announced that Pitchfork would be absorbed into their increasingly holistic men’s magazine GQ. This merger left many wondering what the future of music journalism would look like, from readers to contributors.
FENER: I sat down with longtime Pitchfork reader and contributor Daniel Bromfield to hear his thoughts about the recent merger and what made Pitchfork a distinct voice in music journalism.
DANIEL BROMFIELD: I mean, I think they have high standard, I think they had good writers, and still do have a lot of really incredible writers. And generally, I find it much more sort of gratifying to read something from pitchfork than from a lot of other publications, just I think because they have real, really high standards and hired really incredible writers like Megan Garvey, or like Sam Goldner.
FENER: Pitchfork’s amplification of critical voices such as the ones Bromfield mentioned added to the publication’s unique attributes. The generous rate of pay also made Pitchfork a rewarding place for which to write.
BROMFIELD: First I was making 150 per review and 200 for like a headline review. Then it was 200 for like a non headline and 300 for headline review, which is amazing, because most review places don’t pay anything.
FENER: Bromflield went on to explain that the future is looking murky for Pitchfork writers like himself and for the industry as a whole.
BROMFIELD: I mean, they used to publish five reviews a day. Then it became four then three, and now we’re looking like two or three. Well, they have not really made clear to me what the long term future is going to be. And a lot of people have the same, you know, they expressed the same reservations. It doesn’t look good, though, and, you know, it does seem very bleak for music journalism. I mean, it’s kind of, it’s, I feel like it’s in a little bit of a crisis right now, not just because publications are going away. But also like, you know, I think now that streaming exists, there’s not quite as much, you know, demand for someone to tell you, you know, how music sounds before you buy it.
FENER: Northwestern professor Patti Wolter, who has extensive experience in the field of journalism having spent over a decade in the magazine industry, echoed some of Bromfield’s sentiments.
PATTI WOLTER: In some ways I like to say that magazines are kind of like restaurants, they’re always starting and folding. But right now, like in the last month, month and a half, it feels like we’ve had a huge amount of layoffs and media across the board, whether you’re looking at glossy magazines, or magazine-like properties and our websites. So we’re, we’ve hit a pressure point.
KARRAH TOATLEY: A pressure point that resulted in the roughly 400 members of the Condè Nast Union deciding to go on a 24-hour strike on Jan 23 in New York City.
WOLTER: The movement to unionize magazines is relatively young. And I think it’s, in part, been very much a reaction to the contraction in the industry, and trying to create some fairness for workers in that environment.
TOATLEY: Condè Nast only recently became a public union in June of 2018, with Pitchfork later joining the Union in March 2019. To gain a better understanding of the purpose of Unions and why a one day strike would cause such a stir I reached out to someone who knows a lot more about Unions than me.
CARSON BROWN: My name is Carson Brown, I’m a campaign lead at the news guild CWA, our parent union is the Communication Workers of America. Typically, how unions form in the media industry is that a group of workers will be talking to each other, and motivated by what they see going on, either in the industry writ large or within their workplace itself, will then reach out to us or to another union, potentially, and ask a organizer here or your rep, or representative, hear how they can go about forming their union. And that’s when we assigned folks out to help them do that work.
TOATLEY: The strike comes months after Condè Nast announced they would lay off 5% of workers, translating to roughly 300 people losing their jobs, resulting in negotiations between the union and the company to go awry. However, the journalism industry is not the most known for its job security, and layoffs happen quite often, partly due to the narrative that print is a dying form. Brown, however, had a pushback for this rhetoric.
BROWN: Layoffs and lack of job security have almost nothing really to do with profitability and have entirely to do with how management has decided their bottom line needs to look at the beginning of the next quarter or the next fiscal year. So, like, that’s something that, like, I think people can understand and, like, know that that is true across all industries. And we know for a fact that newspapers are really profitable. That’s why these employers can, like, buy up papers, decimate the newsrooms, sell off all of their resources and make a huge profit. Um, we know that that’s what’s going on and this is kind of like part of journalists fighting back against it.
TOATLEY: Hence the union decided to go on strike. But why for only 24 hours?
BROWN: When it comes to a one day work stoppage, very often, this is a display of solidarity and a display of force that the union can say, we have the ability to move on masse, and we have the ability to, you know, show that like this work depends on us. You can’t do this work without us. And that’s the message of one day essentially.
TOATLEY: Despite sending this message, it doesn’t change the fact that the merger is happening and many Pitchfork writers and editors have lost their jobs. Meaning pitchfork readers will have to find a different space to garner music analysis.
FENER: RTVF sophomore James Lee said that he reads Pitchfork because of their album reviews’ unique focus on the background behind music.
JAMES LEE: They’re good at context. They’re good at context in their reviews, and I’m a sucker for good context. Like, it’s not because ultimately, a good piece of criticism and analytical writing is not about the product itself, or like the artwork itself. It’s about everything that’s led to its creation. It’s about everything that’s occurring in its periphery, as well as the artwork itself. It does enhance your understanding of a piece of you know, what led up to it. So like, I just, I liked seeing that stuff. I think that is one of their better advantages.
FENER: Lee, a film critic, described the trends he observes in the current media landscape around criticism.
LEE: Well, it’s all clicks based, right? We’re seeing, like a lessening and priority of like people who actually care materially and artistically about the stuff they’re covering. It’s a bleak situation, but at the same time there’s full awareness that people are fighting it. Things have become a lot more democratized. But that means there are more opportunities for people to basically become expendable in the process. And I think, seeing that as obviously not very encouraging, as someone who has an interest in entering that space, but it’s also at the same time, like, you know, people will do anything to get a profit and mergers like this are evidence of that and layoffs like this are evidence of that. And you know, that craving for profit comes at the expense of genuine voices who care about what it is they’re– what it is they’re covering.
FENR: While this can all seem very discouraging for music lovers and readers of entertainment journalism, Bromfield indicated some areas where he sees the industry moving in a new and positive direction.
BROMFIELD: But, you know, I’m actually a little bit optimistic as well, because I think that the demise of Pitchfork might really bring other music journalists who are trying to start independent things kind of into hyperdrive because I think Pitchfork has had a little bit of a monopoly on music reviews, you know, people go to Pitchfork. So that kind of makes me think that maybe there’s going to be something to fill this void.
FENER and TOATLEY: For WNUR News, I’m Sydney Fener and I’m Karrah Toatley.
[Outro Music: “Tom Petty’s gone(but tell him i asked for him)” by Kurt Vile, cont’d]
