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Night of the living music journalist
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Is music journalism dead? (Photo Erik Casarez)
I checked my mail this morning for the first time in weeks. Amongst the barrage of ads to stores I will never shop at and bills I thought I already paid I found what I thought was a brochure for Paste, the music magazine I subscribed to earlier this year. After opening the index-card-sized pages I realized this wasn’t a brochure, it was the magazine.
The fact that print journalism is on a downturn is not breaking news, but with the folding of several well established magazines, the end may be closer than originally thought. In the wake of the economic recession, music magazines have undergone drastic cosmetic changes
Paste halted the disbursement of sampler CDs in favor of an MP3 code and changed their layout from a 70 page standard layout to a 40 page miniature layout. Blender folded in April. Music mag juggernaut Rolling Stone was forced to downsize their signature tabloid layout to a standard layout. Music journalism isn’t just dying; it’s slowly losing its relevance.
We’re far removed from the heyday of music journalism, when the writers were as big of rock stars as the musicians they were writing about. Is it the difference of times, the advancement of technology, or has the culture of music journalism completely changed since the 70s?
There are prominent music journalists today like Chuck Klosterman and Andy Greenwald, but they don’t reach the impacting status of Lester Bangs or Al Aronowitz (the guy that introduced the Beatles to Bob Dylan inspiring the psychedelic era of the Sgt. Pepper variety). It’s not that the writers aren’t as immersed in the music culture as they used to be, but rather the diversification of popular music has shifted the camaraderie that once existed between writers and musicians to more professional and less cordial. Now, instead of being a part of the party, the music writer is just an observer.
This isn’t a science and it could be argued the opposite; maybe the writers of the 60s and 70s were exceptions to the norm, but that’s what made rock journalism so unique. As music culture diversifies, music analysis diversifies. This isn’t to say that one era is better than the other, but instead simply that the realm of music journalism is constantly changing. As we head into the further demise of the music magazine, it will be interesting to see where the music journalist goes from here.
Paste’s new format and layout comes at the expense of shorter articles and even shorter reviews. The writers are talented enough to still evoke some personality within the smaller confines, but if a music magazine expects to survive today it needs to do something that will distinguish itself from a blog. If not, then the music journalist is as good as the walking dead.
EDIT: The "June" issue of Paste layout change was only for that issue. I apologize for the confusion, especially on my part, and would like to say that the July issue is on newstands and is in the standard layout. Paste has also initiated a campaign to help save the magazine that can be viewed here.
