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Pitchfork’s absorption into GQ is a travesty for music media – and musicians | Laura Snapes
Condé Nast’s gutting of the esteemed alternative publication and its staff is the latest example of media conglomerates prioritising capital over culture
And why, given the site’s massive diversification of critics and music genres covered that decade – moving from its bread-and-butter indie rock to include pop and rap – was Condé’s chief digital officer Fred Santarpia proudly telling the New York Times that the acquisition brought “a very passionate audience of millennial males into our roster”? Incorporating Pitchfork into a men’s magazine also cements perceptions that music is a male leisure pursuit, and undermines the fact that it was women and non-binary writers – Lindsay Zoladz, Jenn Pelly, Carrie Battan, Amanda Petrusich, Sasha Geffen, Jill Mapes, Doreen St Félix, Hazel Cills; the fearless editing of Jessica Hopper and then the most recent editor-in-chief Puja Patel, to name but a handful – who transformed the website in the 2010s. But in writing it, I got to contact the national library of the artist’s home country to ask them to dig out newspaper clippings from the 80s, and their original record label for any contemporaneous artefacts; to ferret around on obscure forums, excavating information tucked into dusty archives for a wider audience.
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