Woebot
Well-known member
This evening I went to the RIU&SA panel chat show. It was good.
At one point in the evening the complaint emerged on the panel that Music Journalism was dead in the press. NME was compared to Heat magazine by Gina Birch. In spite of being lucky enough to write for a couple of very esteemed, very wonderful magazines, work I undertake in a spirit of high seriousness and emotional dedication I sort of agreed a bit.
I suppose the thing about the NME and Melody Maker and Sounds in their heyday was that they had such enormous momentum. They came out every week! And hundreds of thousands of people read them cover to cover. The (quite excellent) titles I write for come out once a month and quartely and they have, i suppose it's fair to say, a quite small readership. I reckon those conditions, completely without regard to the kind of writing thats being turned-in, aren't suitable the kind of mind-melting density, the "heat" that the inkies used to generate.
Someone, I think it was Tom, piped up with words to the effect of "it's all on the internet now!", and rather than feeling sort of stirred, well things can get extremely passionate and very involved and trans-national to boot, I felt kind of ambivalent. Now I've dedicated as much energy to the internet as anyone, and I just wonder if rather than being this site of extreme freedom, it's a sort of ghetto. And I'm posting this in the "thought" forum, cos I wonder if that doesn't apply to other subjects just as much.....
At one point in the evening the complaint emerged on the panel that Music Journalism was dead in the press. NME was compared to Heat magazine by Gina Birch. In spite of being lucky enough to write for a couple of very esteemed, very wonderful magazines, work I undertake in a spirit of high seriousness and emotional dedication I sort of agreed a bit.
I suppose the thing about the NME and Melody Maker and Sounds in their heyday was that they had such enormous momentum. They came out every week! And hundreds of thousands of people read them cover to cover. The (quite excellent) titles I write for come out once a month and quartely and they have, i suppose it's fair to say, a quite small readership. I reckon those conditions, completely without regard to the kind of writing thats being turned-in, aren't suitable the kind of mind-melting density, the "heat" that the inkies used to generate.
Someone, I think it was Tom, piped up with words to the effect of "it's all on the internet now!", and rather than feeling sort of stirred, well things can get extremely passionate and very involved and trans-national to boot, I felt kind of ambivalent. Now I've dedicated as much energy to the internet as anyone, and I just wonder if rather than being this site of extreme freedom, it's a sort of ghetto. And I'm posting this in the "thought" forum, cos I wonder if that doesn't apply to other subjects just as much.....