The Playgoer: Shaming the Voice

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Thursday, November 30, 2006

Shaming the Voice

Quite an interesting bit of journalistic schadenfreude over at the Times at the expense of my beloved Village Voice in this piece about a new web-challenge to the Voice's perennial "Pazz & Jop" poll, a cornerstone of modern pop music criticism and intellectual fandom. The status of the feature was thrown into question by the abrupt laying off by the new Voice corporate HQ of rock-crit god Robert Christgau, who had been running the thing for some 30-40 years.

Now Gawker has spawned its own music blog Idolator, which will be emulating the Christgau tradition in its new "Jackin' Pop" poll this year, and has gone about recruiting the hippest and best critics in the field.

Says Idolator:

“For those who had long turned to The Voice to help guide them through the realm of pop, rock and hip-hop,” the announcement read, “the 51-year-old alt-weekly now had about as much musical credibility as, say, a three-month-old blog.”
I must say, as a blogger, I can't wondering if this isn't a good thing? Or at least acknowledging the inevitable--namely that as serious arts criticism becomes increasingly endangered in print, it can now only thrive on the web. And thrive it does. At least, as long as it remains free content...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi there Playgoer,

Seeen The Vertical Hour yet?

Bestest,
Maxie