how you can call yourself an editor and be stringently resistant to the idea of being edited is beyond me…

http://marccooper.com/la-weekly-the-autopsy-report/

Yes, I agree – we are sometimes limited to the acts that come through and the timing of deadlines/print dates, etc… For example, my coverage of Hughes was delayed by him being on tour with Jenny Lewis and trying to time it with one of his upcoming shows in town. It wasn’t for lack of knowledge, as implied.

I have to wonder why Mark and Fred attack some of my choices of acts that have been covered (as they are passing through town), yet neither defends or mentions the latest story in Blurt that recommends keeping an eye out for the latest Kylie Minogue and U2 CDs (by choice)? It happens to everyone, let’s move on from the personal attacks.

We all cover music. Instead of giving encouragement and advice on ways to improve in a personal email, or even discussing the problems in a more general manner, the “elder statesmen” above prefer to attack their counterparts and former employers by name/publication on a public forum in a manner that comes off as bitter instead of constructive.

I feel like I’m in middle school, being picked on by bullies…

However, as long as I continue to get regular emails and personal messages stating that my coverage is an improvement over previous efforts and that local music was all but ignored before I got here, I’ll continue on my present path and make the majority of readers happy.

It should be noted, I’ve heard a story about a music editor (whose name and publication will be withheld — though they are highly regarded above) who did not own a car and rarely, if ever, attended a concert during their tenure at an alt-weekly. How you can be a music editor and not attend a live show or get out and talk to the bands you write about is beyond me. People need to get out and see a variety of shows, talk to the people in the scene and get out of the office. Of course, this can be said for just about every section of every newspaper. That’s JM 101 stuff…

Instead of a question seeking personal attacks on publications, the question of the week should have asked, “What are your recommendations to the local alt-weeklies of how they can improve coverage despite shrinking news holes and fewer writers?”

The desperation at alt weeklies today to grow their readership by covering mainstream issues and mirroring the local dailies has left a severe void in coverage of good music. And that’s too bad; it doesn’t have to be that way. In Charlotte, mainstream acts acts are regularly covered at Creative Loafing while bands like Cafe Tacuba get zero coverage. (Ironically, I wrote a cover story for the Charlotte Observer’s entertainment weekly entertainment pullout on Cafe Tacuba’s tour-opener in Charlotte while Creative Loafing ignored the show.) The music that suffers most, of course, is the local stuff.

Charlotte’s recent music scene has spawned acts ranging from Anthony Hamilton to Benji Hughes to the Avett Brothers. And yet Creative Loafing is largely silent on so many up-and-coming acts, preferring catch-up pieces (they wrote about Hughes after the fact), pieces on local bands that have been around forever, mystifying major section features on national touring has-beens like Buckcherry and Motley Crue, and devoting limited review space to stuff like Lenny Kravitz, Emerson, Lake and Palmer and a live David Gilmour album. When Kanida Crazy Horse was music editor, the writing/criticism was generally excellent (award-winning, even) and when she chose to cover big, fat mainstream acts coming through town (the Stones, for instance), she put them in alt-weekly context. But she got very little respect at CL.

Sadly, this problem doesn’t seem to be limited to the Charlotte Creative Loafing. (After all, the Voice has ditched both Christgau and Nat Hentoff.) There just seems to be an epidemic of ignorance and bad news judgment in music journalism these days, particularly at local papers. Smart online outlets really should pick up the ball and run with it, as I’m sure they are doing and will be doing more in the future. (By the way, the Charlotte are has responded with a pretty darn good regional magazine called Shuffle, edited by the very smart John Schacht.)

Of course, it goes without saying that our alt-weeklies will soon be going the way of the buffalo, which is pretty much the same direction all of music journalism is going/has gone. It’s ironic that the medium, ostensibly “alternative” and “modern,” is itself having trouble navigating the new world. In my experience here in New England our weeklies are still being run and in many cases written by the same people who started them in the late ’70s and ’80s. Editors and publishers cling desperately to their titles, their livelihood; can they not know that their future is in peril?

Yeah, I’m a casualty of my own alt-weekly, where I covered the local music scene as a stringer, not a full-time employee. For a few years now my paper was predominantly financed by the skin trade insert, and who knows how robust those ads will be in our new economy? A few forward thinking editors and writers like our own Fred M. have found refuge in online work. But I wonder where the rest will go after all of our alt-weeklies—they’re newspapers after all—run their last snarky editorials and “cutting edge” political commentary.

So, in my opinion, anything in newsprint is dead meat, with the possible exception of a handful of metro newspapers. My real question is whether there will be an outlet for legitimate music journalism after all the new media havoc is wreaked. Or will our art form go the way of poetry and literary criticism? Not that the alt-weeklies were Grade A forums for our kind of thing, but lately I’ve been obsessed with the future of what I’ve been doing for the last 17 years. I mean, I know it’s over for me … But is it over for all of us?

The AV Club’s Decider recently launched in Denver, and is putting a lot more stock in taking online entertainment guides beyond the usual evergreen club listings for more real editorial content, which adds a glimmer of hope that art/music/entertainment side of things will make the transfer to the ‘net beyond the AOL/Gannett versions of entertainment listings.

As far as long, in-depth interviews, though, I’m a little worried that they’ll fade with alt-weekly circulation.

Seriously, no one but masochists like me and an even smaller minority of true believers reads the editorial matter in these things; most people pick them up only for the entertainment schedules or the sex ads in the back. Heavily subsidized by entertainment (booze, food and music) and fringe businesses who will soon be cutting back on advertising to cut expenses or even going out of business thanks to the recession, these “priceless” (as in they couldn’t give them away for free otherwise) throwaways will soon be extinct. I won’t miss them.

Jeff, i understand that by working off the bands that are traveling to charlotte you’re at least partially forced to play a hand that’s dealt by local show promoters, but c’mon, the piece doesn’t exactly ‘examine’ her success on the internet (what do ’50,000 plays a day’ mean? when was she getting that sort of traffic? did signing to a major help boost her myspace profile? is ‘bubbly’ still getting plays/selling digital tracks?) as much as it does mention it and then move on to other boilerplate ‘how does it feel to be so awesome’ q&a material. you’re an alt-weekly; you can go deep on angles that are different, exciting, fresh.