Posts Tagged ‘Todd L. Burns’

He wanted to be a jazz pianist. While studying at Stanford and Oxford, he practiced three to four hours every day to make it happen, as well as writing a review column every week in the Stanford Daily. But arthritis hit Ted Gioia in his early thirties, and his plans changed. Music journalism and scholarship is all the better for it. He’s just published Music: A Subversive History, which he calls a culmination of his life’s work.

Now has an interview with Todd L. Burns at the Music Journalism Insider. For the next ten days, you can read the whole thing here. After that, it will disappear behind a paywall.  An excerpt:

Where do you see music journalism headed?

Terri Dien

From a financial perspective, music journalism is in a state of crisis—it’s very hard to earn a living doing it. From a non-financial perspective, music journalism operates in a blissful utopian state, where you can do whatever you want and publish it online without having to worry about gatekeepers such as editors and agents. The challenge now is to take advantage of the freedoms of the digital age without capsizing on the financial hazards. How do you live in this utopia and still pay the bills? This is not easy, but it can be done—at least by those who are the most determined and have a high threshold for pain.

What would you like to see more of in music journalism right now?

I’d like to see more investigative reporting. The music industry is famous for its dirty tricks and low ethical standards. But I see very little interest among the “entertainment” media in investigating these. Perhaps it has some connection with the fact that the companies they might need to investigate are buying ads in their periodicals.

What would you like to see less of in music journalism right now?

I’d like to see less posing and preening—critics writing to impress other critics or (even worse) editors and literary agents, or (worst of all) the tenure committee or some other career power broker. The goal should be to serve the reader.

That may seem obvious, but just consider how often the reader is cast aside in pursuit of some other false idol. Let’s be blunt, some music writers just want to hang out with the celebrities they are supposed to critique, or use their positions to secure some other, even more craven end. I could share horror stories, but I’m sure you’ve heard them yourself. There are literally dozens of ways the reader can be shortchanged. Frankly, the pay is so bad in music writing that you can’t really blame writers for seeking out other compensations, but doing that will hurt the quality of their work and limit their ability to improve and develop.

I say all this as someone who has had to discover a way to keep vital and engaged as a music writer for more than 40 years. I’ve found it very helpful for me to think constantly about my reader, and also to assume that my reader is smart, discerning and hard to please. That has kept me on the right path when I might have strayed. True, it has often gotten me into battles with editors, literary agents and other influential parties. But in the long run, it proved right to engage in those battles, even if I took some wounds in the short term.

What’s one tip that you’d give a music journalist starting out right now?

Work constantly to expand your knowledge of music and musicians, and to improve your writing. The goal should be to develop into an expert who knows things other music writers don’t. You should take music writing as seriously as a doctor takes the study of medicine or a judge takes the study of law. These people devote many years of their lives to learning their craft even before they start practicing their vocation. Just because no one requires you to do this in music journalism doesn’t mean you shouldn’t impose this type of discipline on yourself.

What’s one thing you’d like to see more of from editors, in general?

I encourage editors to fight against the click-chasing mindset and the pressure to dumb down articles. I urge them to champion smart work over hot takes, and make it possible for writers to do their best work, even in the face of metrics that might suggest a more formula-driven approach.

I’ve watched this game long enough to see that dumbing down is the start of a death spiral that ends in a periodical going out of business. I note that 2,000 newspapers have disappeared in the last 15 years, but the two that have thrived—the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal—are the ones that resisted most strenuously the dumbing-down mandate. That should be a lesson. Believe me, readers want to rise to a higher level, but they need the editor (and, of course, the writer) to make it possible. If editors look down on the reader, they will merely ensure their own irrelevancy.

Here’s an intriguing fact. Every editor who has tried to get me to dumb down an article is now out of a job. Editors who want to take the low road to success ought to mull that over.