Pitchfork, Seriously

Where Music Journalism is No Laughing Matter

On Sunday, I texted the greatly admired Elizabeth Nelson: writer/critic/humorist, master of the X Twitter review-as-Zen koan, golfer and golf journalist, and leader of the group The Paranoid Style, whose new album, The Interrogator, arrived today in the mail. On Sunday, Jan. 14, Elizabeth had written the Sunday album review of a pre-Pitchfork era recording, Bob Dylan's Desire. She has a very distinctive writing voice, so I was curious about what the editing process at Pitchfork was like. She was fine with the give and take. (She also has a Substack which she calls Please Take My Advice, which she writes infrequently, but I always do take her advice.)

A few days later, it was announced that Pitchfork was being devolved, if not yet dissolved, by parent company Condé Nast (New Yorker, Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair). The intentionally imprecise corporate speak of no-less-than Anna Wintour indicated that many staff editors and writers were being dismissed, and that Pitchfork would somehow be subs…