Time Magazine doesn't read Music Blogs
Time.com released it's First Annual Blog Index last night, a list of its 25 top blogs (with a few "most overrated" blogs thrown in the mix). Not a single music blog made the list. Not even Pitchfork, not even Stereogum. What gives?
Among the honorees were some usual suspects (Gawker, Huffington Post, Metafilter, Treehugger), some inspired choices (Reverse Cowgirl—see pic above, Gigazine) and a whole slew of other blogs I'd never heard of/find completely useless. The mag seems to have chosen a lot of blogs with a political bent—Ace of Spades HQ, aforementioned HuffPo, an angry political Italian named Beppe Grillo's blog, etc.
All this comes in the wake of the New Yorker's puff piece about the death of newspapers and how the sky's going to fall when there's no more print and everything's a big blog (note: the piece's author, Eric Alterman, writes..a blog). The piece does make a good point: that a lot of stuff on so-called news blogs just aggregates research and writing that's been done by other people, who are often reporters for traditional newspapers generating original material.
As for music blogs, though, it's hard to imagine a print newspaper or magazine able to keep up with the number of CDs Pitchfork reviews every day, for example (though UK's awesome print mag The Wire does a damn good job), or the number of shows that go down every night. Though you might have to be an expert in Middle Eastern policy to be able to report intelligently on Iraq, you don't really have to have a PhD in music to have a potentially useful take on pop or rock. But as Time.com has proved, even online mags can manage to seem lamely obsolete.
Comments
Pitchfork is a webzine, not a blog. There are big differences in format, editing, etc. They publish features, reviews... Not every publication on the internet is a blog.
Agreed, but you have to admit that the line becomes blurrier and blurrier every day. Some might say it's come down to design as the differentiating factor. Yet, I read Pitchfork news like I read any other blog (in my RSS reader), which takes away even the design elements. Damn tricky this web 2.0 thing is...
Feisty! I'd consider their main news channel a blog, no?
Whoops, sorry if that came off a little harsher than I meant it. Anyway, I would say that the news is the closest thing to a blog on Pitchfork, but that's just because they do live updates... so does the New York Times. And nothing on Pitchfork allows comments, which is a somewhat defining feature of blogs. But I think design and editorial attention, advance planning, etc., all separate more formal publications from blogs. There's also an argument to be made that blogs are written in a more casual, interactive way.
Yeah, I hear these "weblogs" are really the wave of the future! But seriously, folks... I, for one, hate blogs, including this one. I think they're for lazy do-nothings (I'm looking at you here, Frankel!) who don't have the editorial chops or the initiative to get a real writing job. I could keep going, but I'll spare you all the rant...