There is an interview up with Pitchfork founder and owner Ryan Schreiber on the Chicago Sun-Times website, the interviewer comes off like a Fox News attack dog, but his line of questioning is interesting. The interviewer Jim DeRogatis questions the journalistic integrity of Pitchfork based on it's recent expansion beyond the daily music web-update. Pitchfork is premiering a new music video site called Pitchfork.tv as well as hosting a large 3-day festival in Chicago for the 4th year (July 18-20: be there, or be square) in a row. DeRogatis argues that by being into promotion through the new music video thing and the concert promotion thing, Pitchfork looses it's credibility as critics engaging with indie music. This is a decent argument made stronger by Schreiber sort of sounding naive in his responses: basically, we really believe in what we're doing so we can't sell out!
But I think that this all comes down to process. As long as you have the right process within the company, you can avoid conflicts of interest. As long as the PR people don't tell the reviewers what to review or what to say, great. And, as long as Pitchfork is reviewing band's album before they are making big music video hooplas or festivals with said band, I think things are more or less okay. Besides, Pitchfork has basically built it's brand on being the snobbiest, but pretty accurate, music site out there. If that changes, because of some "corporate synergy" shenanigan, I think it'll be painfully obvious.
Posted by matt at March 7, 2008 4:51 PM | TrackBack