The Real Reasons Pitchfork Is Going Under
If journalists want to keep their jobs, they must reflect on why Pitchfork failed instead of blaming “corporations” and rallying around their ineffective unions.
Conde Nast soft-shuttered Pitchfork this week, folding the music outlet into GQ. So, journalists analyzed why their beloved publication was closing, right? Wrong. Every social media obituary revolved around evil corporate ownership and the union struggles of Conde Nast’s staff.
Let me be clear: I feel bad for the journalists who lost their jobs—getting fired sucks. I love reading journalism more than anyone and subscribe to every magazine. (I am probably the lone person subscribing to both Jacobin and the Daily Wire.) But a little analysis of what went wrong is critical to other outlets avoiding Pitchfork’s fate.
I, for one, saw this coming years ago. I was a journalist before I was a publicist. In my early twenties, I freelanced and worked for the indie-coded mainstream digital press, writing for Complex, Thought Catalog, and Vice, the digital media equivalent of a comatose patient that a family refuses to unplug. (I don’t understand why investors continue to float Shane Smith’s long con, but someone will eventually pull the plug on Vice.)
When these outlets made money (and, at some point, they earned dough), they catered to their base, were willing to offend, and carefully monitored their brand identity. (I will always remember the hours of debate that consumed the 2013 Vice office about why we could cover Paris Hilton but not Kim Kardashian.) But a few years ago, around the dawn of Trump, these outlets pivoted to broad culture coverage and obsessed over pleasing Twitterati.
In many companies, the horrible editorial decision coincided with inept business leaders who overpaid the business side and clumsily attempted to diversify revenue streams. (Here’s to you, pivot-to-video!) Of course, many of these business leaders also had to contend with new hostile unions, who fought execs and prevented companies from quickly pivoting to new business models. The Pitchforks of the world are all in trouble, while Joe Rogan and Barstool Sports, which took the opposite editorial and business approaches, are thriving.
There are five main lessons from the Pitchfork debacle, and learning from them is vital to other culture publications staying in business.
Differentiation
When I came up in the media, brands had clear identities. Pitchfork, for instance, catered to the indie crowd and rarely praised a pop album. When they did acclaim a pop record, the review was an event because it was such a departure from the brand’s identity. But as stan culture took over social media, brands began praising everyone. Attacking Beyonce or Taylor Swift was taboo. The result: Every media outlet read the same, so audiences had no reason to visit a homepage daily.
To avoid being Pitchforked by corporate owners, editors must differentiate their brands. It’s a tragedy I can’t tell the difference between Entertainment Weekly’s and Pitchfork’s review pages. We don’t need ten blogs that praise Taylor Swift’s every breath. We need diversified editorial visions.
The Right Kind of Circle Jerk
Similarly, Pitchfork pivoted from regularly lambasting albums (0.0 ratings for Liz Phair’s self-titled pop record) to overly praising albums. (Is Taylor Swift’s Folklore an 8.0?) Pitchfork went from annoying-but-fun to dull. Pitchfork and other media outlets now refuse to troll.
Nice Pitchfork was a departure from the history of popular media. Since the days of Hearst, outlets trolled. Outlets must be willing to offend to succeed and get attention. Otherwise, they’re sitting in the wrong circle jerk, preaching to their choir.
Some reporters might hate this description and lambast it on social media. But in private, most of them complain about so-called poptimism. They want to be able to write what they want when they want. They hate that they must cater to the masses.
Balance with the Labels
Many music journalists speak about being righteous speakers of truth, but Pitchfork’s pivot-to-nice was a gift to music labels. Execs want to see glorified press releases in print. In reality, this Pitchfork era sucked for labels and readers. Americans gravitate to outlets with a little bit of tension. Nobody wants a perfect celebrity. Pitchfork’s niceties drained the outlet of its bite.
Outlets should strike a balance with music labels and publicists. They should occasionally be kind, so they retain access to celebrities. But they must occasionally include some biting remarks. Otherwise, readers don’t believe what they read–if they read it. As a publicist, I always tell clients they should seek profiles that include a little criticism alongside praise. That way, readers believe the praise and also journalists get the attention they need to stay in business.
New Union Leadership
I believe in unions, but a union only works if there’s money for the union to grab from the table. Yes, Amazon workers should unionize–because Amazon makes money it doesn’t share with factory workers. But media outlets are low-margin businesses. All these unions have accomplished is slowly delaying the inevitable layoffs and preventing companies from quickly pivoting to new models.
Workers don’t even get much from these unions. When I was a journalist, I belonged to one of these unions, and I gained nothing. The raises were paltry, a few thousand dollars extra a year after I paid union dues. After I was fired, the union refused to help collect my contractually owed severance and claimed they had “lost” their legal notes from the meeting when management canned me. I had to hire my lawyer to collect what I was owed. Once I received my severance, the union tried to get me to continue paying union dues on the severance, even though they had refused to help.
Yet many union members worship their leadership. It creates a culture forbidding anyone from speaking against the union’s cult-like beliefs. The union leaders believe that journalists lose jobs because of evil business owners. In reality, they’re losing jobs because these brands are collapsing, partially because of unions and bad editorial decisions. (Which isn’t to say the business side isn’t at fault! Idiots lead many media companies.) The whole union experience was one of the reasons I vowed to become self-employed and never work for someone again.
Union leaders and journalists need to be more realistic about the reality of the media. Otherwise, they won’t have any workers to represent. And as someone who loves reading, I don’t want to live in a world without media to read.
Lowering Overhead
The biggest mistake of Pitchfork and other digital media comes from the business side. For years, the execs pushed outlets to gain more and more traffic, so they pushed editors to invest in more writers. They published so much content that it was impossible to control quality. Worst of all, the ad revenue from all that traffic never came. The truth is that the Jessica Hopper-led Pitchfork Review likely would have been the best model for Pitchfork. The brand was never going to work as a traffic mill. It should have been a small, occasionally asshole-ish prestige outlet with a music festival attached.
Other cultural outlets should explore different editorial models to remain in business. Since each brand should be different, these models should differ. But the days of chasing traffic are over, so people must change how they operate.
How Does the Media Move Forward?
Of course, everyone wants every media outlet to be worth a hundred million–if not billions–of dollars. New models won’t match executives’ ambitions, but the traffic model never created billionaires anyway. Executives need to permit journalists to operate leaner but profitable organizations, and journalists need to ignore their union leaders and focus on delivering what readers want. Only then will these types of outlets thrive.