Given that a lot of editors and writers are being let go; wouldn't this be a great opportunity for them to start a new publication?
How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
151–160 of 213 posts
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well there are signs. There have been less in depth articles in the past years. And they have started pulling in the occasional Wired article, most of the time digital security fearmongering with zero to negative value. They're clearly marked as Wired on the front page now, I think because people complained, but I'm guessing Conde Nast is forcing them to keep pulling them, which is worrying. I'm still paying for a su…
The terms of the Conde's acquisition state they are not allowed to interfere with the operation of the site. The depth of articles or the decision to pull in Wired content is strictly an editorial decision made by Ars editorial leadership.
Got a bridge to sell to you then. Or if you live at the north pole, a refrigerator?
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much to my surprise, they have managed to avoid killing Reddit so far. (Well, technically Reddit is owned by Conde's parent Advance, not Conde itself.)
You haven't been looking hard enough if you believe Reddit is still the same it was pre-API bullshit. Fake comments, more pliable moderators, dead subreddits are everywhere now.
I don't like the changes any more than you do, but as far as I can tell the API boycotts have had zero impact on the subreddits I follow.
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most reviews of the album went something like: "If you don't like metal and prog rock, then you probably will hate this album, because it is a tour de force of these relatively unpopular genres. If you like metal and prog rock, then you probably will love it." Because that's pretty much all a reader needs to know. ... > The point of the review is that if you're a fan of metal, Tool's Lateralus is a 10.0. If you don…
A more contemporary example might be Rick and Morty. Now R&M is an immensely popular show, but we all know there is a subsets of its fanbase who are intolerable and who unironically speak about this cartoon as being for people with high IQs. Now imagine if a contemporary publication published a review of the latest season and chose not too focus on the content but rather parody these fans. Fans of the show will watch…
> subsets of its fanbase who are intolerable
I hear this relentlessly but I can't say I have ever seen what this is first hand. If R&M comes up on r/television I don't see anything unusual. Where do people run into this fanbase?
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#155Before their Conde Nast acquisitions, I used to visit both Ars Technica and Reddit reasonably often, both were sites were eventually stripped of their personality to the point where I no longer bother with either.
Yeah here in the Netherlands there was a similar community called Tweakers that's similarly been ruined by a takeover by a huge Belgian media company. It's so commercial now :(
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#156"Music writing says: Slow down. Pay attention.” It does? New Music Express still seems to be doing OK. [1] https://www.nme.com/
> "Music writing says: Slow down. Pay attention.” > It does? It does. Music is, for most regular people during most of their regular lives, a 3- or 4-minute phenomenon that happens in the background while they're doing other things. To write about music (especially regular, popular music) at all is to invite people to slow down and pay attention, like writing about breathing, or about balance and proprioception.
When I read the music press in the 90s it was to get the latest news on tours, learn what was cool, chase the cool myself and read lurid accounts of whoever was injecting heroin in they eyeballs or whatever. It was to press the accelerator pedal of consumption and novelty instead of waiting for it to trickle through from other sources.
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
To me, a good review clearly explains why . If Cheer2171 gives Casablanca a 2/5... okay? But if it gets a 2/5 and an explanation that you thought the cinematography was hacky and the drama overwrought... that's cool. I might like the cinematography and over-dramatic dialog! 110% agreed that too many reviews/critiques these days are milquetoast. Have an opinion that the reviwer is passionate about! And argue it fully…
Speaking of video game reviews, that's why I've focused on Rock Paper Shotgun back in the day when they didn't do "reviews" but "Wot I think". Each article was an honest and earnest, detailed description of a human experience and their genuine thoughts. You wouldn't always agree with the reviews but it'd always be an interesting and informative read.
I haven't followed it in ages, but Critical Distance aggregates the kind of writing you're looking for: https://www.critical-distance.com/
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
A more contemporary example might be Rick and Morty. Now R&M is an immensely popular show, but we all know there is a subsets of its fanbase who are intolerable and who unironically speak about this cartoon as being for people with high IQs. Now imagine if a contemporary publication published a review of the latest season and chose not too focus on the content but rather parody these fans. Fans of the show will watch…
> subsets of its fanbase who are intolerable I hear this relentlessly but I can't say I have ever seen what this is first hand. If R&M comes up on r/television I don't see anything unusual. Where do people run into this fanbase?
Apologies for the long quote but this goes some way in covering it;
>As fan communities now have endless forums and formats to debate and discuss, there’s been a shift from simply being a fan of something to somehow assuming ownership of it. The combination of Reddit boards and social media means internet die-hards begun viewing their roles not as passive viewers, but as active policers. Some critic doesn’t like the latest Marvel film that you’re pretty sure you’ll love? Get ’em.
>And this curious urge – worse in the sci-fi and superhero genres and infinitely worse in young male fans – has reached its nadir in the young, male sci-fi fandom of Rick And Morty.
>Even mentioning the show my colleagues at GQ provoked a response of mild disgust. They hadn’t seen it, one said, but had always been put off because of the fans. I know exactly what they mean. And it has only gotten worse.
>When, in a joke in the third-series premiere, Rick says his whole motivation isn’t to avenge anyone’s death, but was instead “driven by finding that McNugget sauce. That’s my series arc”, referring to a promotional Szechuan dipping sauce that McDonald’s used to sell in the late 1990s for a promotional tie-in with the movie Mulan, the fans took him at his word and the very next day began online petitions to demand its return. McDonald’s, never one to bypass free PR, announced a few months later the sauce would come back for a limited time. But it didn’t have enough for the demand, so the fans then protested – online and in person – and, in some cases, the police were called. To repeat: McDonald’s dipping sauce.
>If sauce entitlement is one thing, the fans took it to a whole new level by the end of the third series. The Rick And Morty writing room had always been a bro club and so creator Harmon had hired some new female comedy writers to even out the imbalance. The fans, convinced they were the cause of what they saw as a dip in quality in the third series, went after the new female writers online individually, abusing, threatening and slandering them on Twitter and creating Reddit threads just to smear them. They even doxed them, publishing their personal information online.
>And don’t just take my word for it. Even Harmon despises this sector of his own fandom.
>They want, he told Entertainment Weekly, “to protect the content they think they own – and somehow combine that with their need to be proud of something they have, which is often only their race or gender… I’ve made no bones about the fact that I loathe these people. It fucking sucks.”
The full article: https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/rick-and-morty...
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a little from column a and a little column b in practice. Puja Patel (editor in chief) is fairly open about being in a mission to increase diversity and specifically covering fewer white male bands. You may spin that as “wokeness” (note: the parent never used that phrase) but it’s one and the same to covering what younger listeners were interested in over most of the last decade too. In lots of ways raging again…
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What the fuck am I reading.
Re: How Condé Nast bought and destroyed Pitchfork
#160Pitchfork died because it developed a problem with music itself. Prior to 2014, the site thrived because it took music at face value, and ranked new releases based upon what artists were contributing to the overall canon of progressive independent pop music. Everything changed in 2015. There was a drastic editorial shift, where the publication became repulsed by its own "unbearable whiteness" [1]. A kind of over-corr…
Wow. Yeah, that’s not what happened. I previously worked in music first at CMJ, UrbMag then Fader before working with a few indie and major labels on the digital side. Don’t try to rewrite history to make this a political or “wokeness” thing because of the view of ONE of the many contributors to Pitchfork. What happened to Pitchfork was pure economics. Pitchfork got old just like the article said. After indie, they a…
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