Devaluing Music Journalism, or "How Pitchfork is Creating the Bomb that Will Destroy us...

Pre-text: I've gotten a lot of angry emails from you wondering why this blog has been so dormant, and frankly I'm flattered. You've inspired me to not be such a slacker, I promise I will resume regular content. That being said I'd like to shamelessly defend myself and say that I promise I've been busy with good and worthwhile things.

Something happened sometime around the end of last year - people began really liking Twitter, the social networking service which, best I can tell, is like Facebook only just the status update part (ZING, Twitter). This is a fad that I never hopped on board with, and probably never will - it all seems very trite and meaningless, even in the way of social networking, and that's saying something.

Last month, after Pitchfork's recent re-design, they launched a "column" that I found jay-droppingly stupid - the column is called "Echo Chamber" a not-so-clever musical reference, which is entirely made up of re-quoting musicians and celebrities soundbites. Of those soundbites, about seventy-five percent come from Twitter messages, or "Tweets" as I'm told they're called, and the rest come from various interviews - you know, with music journalists.

I'm not a music journalist for a living - the profits I've made from this website are so small that I don't have to claim them on my taxes, but I'm a fan of music journalism and music-inspired writings in general. Reactionary words which are inspired by art can oft-times be as moving or revolutionary to me as the inspiring art itself is, and it troubles me that this is what our idea of music journalism is. Of course, Pitchfork's not the only offender, Stereogum has their own version which was dubbed an even less clever "We Heard the Tweet" - solely devoted to re-posting Twitter messages.

All of this makes me wonder - have we already reduced the value placed on opinion and reaction to music that the boom of music blogging spurred? Are the tastemakers that once were Stereogum and Pitchfork now just empty vessels of information for consumption during your downtime between classes, after lunch break, etc? Like the quick sweep of the morning headlines, only instead of having your eye caught by North Korean missilie threats, your eyes are caught by Flamping Lips v. Arcade Fire beef, and re-posts of hillarious and/or controversial things that someone else said on their twitter page? Is this really a necesary "Service"? Are we so lazy as consumers that we want other people to read us Twitter so we don't have to visit two websites to consume information and entertainment?

I weep for our collective future.