Earlier this year, I completed a MA in Journalism and, to my surprise and delight, I finished with a First. A massive part of my Masters was a thesis I worked on entitled "Is there a future in dancing about architecture? An examination of the role of the professional music journalist in Ireland in an era of citizen journalism."
While not the catchiest title in the world, my thesis asked a very simple question; is there a future for professional music journalists when faced with competition from bloggers who provide their services for free?
Up until now only those interviewed for the thesis and my lecturers have seen the results of my thesis but I have been asked by a number of people to put a summary and, indeed, the thesis up online in order to provoke further debate. I've been slightly reluctant to do this because it's very difficult to summarise 20,000 words in 6-700 without losing some context. However, I've decided to forgoe those concerns and so here is my summary, as well as a link to the full thesis:
The first step of my thesis was to investigate why so little research had been conducted into popular (and that includes indie) music journalism and I found that the problem seems to be that music isn’t considered as worthy for study/inclusion as literature or theatre, either by academics or newspaper editors. It would seem that they see music as a frivolous pursuit, relegated to the margins, and not a life affirming passion which is obviously ridiculous to those of us who care about music.
I then set about interviewing some of the most influential (based on a number of criteria that can be found in the thesis) bloggers and professional music journalists in Ireland.
2UIBestow – Peter Nagle
Asleep on the Compost Heap – Darragh McCausland
Harmless Noise – Naomi McArdle
Swear I’m Not Paul – Ronan Hunt-Murphy
Those Geese Were Stupefied – Karl McDonald
The Irish Times – Jim Carroll
Irish Independent – John Meagher
Hot Press – Stuart Clark
Nialler9 – Niall Byrne
My thesis focused on their motivations for engaging in music journalism and found three main roles for the music writer; The Critic, The Cheerleader and The Archivist. These roles can be defined as follows:
The Critic combines objective critical analysis with subjectivity.
The Cheerleader promotes only music they likes with no objectivity.
The Archivist decides what is/isn’t important enough to write about.
Anyway, I found that, while the professional music journalists generally gave equal importance to all three roles, almost all of the bloggers felt that that cheerleading was the most important role, believing that they had an obligation to promote new music, often at the expense of objective critical analysis. The reason for this, I believe, is the interactive nature of blogging, the fact that a blogger can talk about a band/album and then immediately let their audience experience it.
That’s not to say that bloggers don’t play the role of The Critic at times, it’s just that, given the opportunity, they almost all failed to mention it as being important.
I also found was that most bloggers don’t actually want to write about music professionally, especially if it means giving up their blog. It was for this reason, amongst others, that I concluded that the challenges faced by professional music journalists do not come from bloggers but rather they are the same challenges faced by other professional journalists (falling sales, etc), which is, for the time being at least, out of their control.
My final conclusion, and something that journalists can control, was that it is much more likely that newspapers/magazines will hire traditional print journalists who are willing to engage with blogging than they are a blogger crossing over to print media, meaning that there remains a future in dancing about architecture for professional music journalists.
So now I’m throwing this open to you, as I know my findings have sparked some debate amongst the journalists/bloggers who took part and I’d like to see if it will provoke further debate. I would, however, recommend that you do read the whole thesis at some stage but I'm willing to justify any and all of my findings. You can find the full thesis here.
Right then, over to you…
Your thesis sounds extremely interesting and couldn't come at a better time!
ReplyDeleteI have to say that for the most part I agree. Not all music bloggers set up blogs to become journalists or paid writers and I can't imagine that many would give up their blog so they could write professionally.
That said, there are some bloggers who make no bones about the fact they have started off a blog so they can into the journalism world. That's an interesting step and can really work to people's advantage.
But as blogging is self-published, and self-edited, you don't always learn how to write in a journalistic way. There is no constructive feedback about your writing style from someone with more experience than you and you can write about whatever you please.
On the latter point, what is great about blogs is that you can write about stuff that for one reason or another wouldn't/doesn't get commissioned.
But I think that learning how to write properly and adhering to the discipline of writing is one of the most important things when it comes to journalism.
Still, people are being hired because their blogging standard is good enough to see them transfer easily to print journalism, making journalism perhaps an easier career in some ways to enter than in times past. And that's a good thing.
Without blogging, there are some writers who maybe would never get the attention of an editor.
I do think though that music magazines face pressure from music bloggers as blogging is so instant - I buy far less music mags than I used to, simply because they're not always up to date. Why wait a month for an album review before you buy an album (ah, the good old days!) when you can stream it online the week before release?
Regarding the 'cheerleader' role, I think that is really well put - the freedom with blogging comes when you can post about bands that you might not be a huge fan of, but you want to get their name out there if you feel other people would like them. Obviously your job is not to push crappy music on people, but to cheerlead who you feel deserves it.
The lack of formal journalism training amongst bloggers (or, at least, those that aspire to becoming journalists) is something that came up in the thesis as being a major stumbling block to turning professional.
ReplyDeleteTake me for example, I'm a journalism graduate. I love music but my course didn't teach me how to write about music, my experience writing for CLUAS, Drop-D and others did that. Likewise, it didn't teach me to be knowledgeable about music, years of gig-going and CD-buying did that.
No, what formal training thought me was the ability to work to multiple deadlines, to learn not to be precious about my writing because subs will always change things and to understand that building a relationship with editors and those that commission work is more important than any CV, portfolio or command of language.
It's this aspect that I think bloggers who want to make a living out of music journalism lack. It's very commendable to love music and to promote bands you believe in, but it's more important to convince editors/decision makers that these musicians will matter to their readership. If you can do that, there might be a job for you, but it's a very small jobs market, at least in this country.
"It's this aspect that I think bloggers who want to make a living out of music journalism lack"
ReplyDeleteI dunno for sure about this, Steven. Most bloggers I read have written, or currently write, for various well-established online or print publications such as State, Drop-D and even the Times and Independent. I think they would have a limited but not naive understanding of deadlines, editors and whatnot.
Anyway, I am mostly posting here to congratulate you on your thesis on which you got a first (modest man that you are not mentioning it here). I completed a PhD thesis myself last year and I know the sometimes nightmarish effort involved. Well done and best of luck in your future endeavours etc.