Multi-Writer Blogzine Thingies
Time for some roundtable chat internet-style hot air. A couple of days ago The Pop Cop had a bit of a dig at The Scotsman’s Under the Radar blog, and today UtR responded. The accusation was of a lack of quality control, and how the volume of writing which their six writers produces has led to some very mediocre bands being covered. UtR responded by saying that they aren’t necessarily setting all of these bands up as the Next Great Big Thing, and that they’re under no pressure to fill column inches, so bands really only do get covered if one of their writers likes them enough to devote the necessary time.
Everyone involved agrees that the primary issue is one of taste. Of course, I personally think both blogs praise some bloody awful music. They in turn must look at some of the stuff I like and wonder what the fuck I am thinking. Then again, there are plenty of times where all three of us (and everyone else) are in total accord, which is when bands tend to get famous. That’s fine – that’s just how taste works, we’re supposed to disagree. So far, so obvious.
The big difference between the two is that The Pop Cop is written by one person and UtR by six, and once that many people are involved you are increasingly likely to find someone who likes pretty much anything. As Ally from The Skinny and Clash Magazine responded when I said that he should have declined to write the review of the Broken Records album: ‘what do you expect The Skinny to do – pass it round the office until they find someone who likes it?’ Well with a group blog where people only write about bands they like that is inevitably what is going to happen.
So what’s the consequence? A lot of content and a muddying of any consistent editorial voice, I suppose, although I do find that UtR is nicely unified by the interspersed editorial articles, almost always written by the two main editors. The stuff inbetween can be a bit difficult to hold together, though. I may write a lot of content as well, and all of you will think at least some of it is total and utter shite, but it is distinctly and obviously my voice. This is something which you will either come to like or you will presumably cease to read after a while, but it certainly gives the site itself a very distinctive personal identity.
This all comes down to the success of blogs and their intersection with proper journalism again, I think. Basically, to get big you need to involve more people, because one person can’t do the requisite amount of work themselves. But do that and you risk diluting the personal voice which makes blogs so special, and it’s rare that people really get around that problem successfully. Glasgow PodcART is also produced by a team of people and can suffer from the same scattershot effect, but their constant bickering amongst themselves dilutes it rather effectively. That interaction itself becomes the disctinctive voice – the defining character of the publication – and crucially it also mitigates against the danger of liking everything by virtue of asking enough people.
In the case of UtR it’s the editorials which punctuate the flow of posts about specific bands and hold the whole thing together, but to really address the specific accusation of the publication itself professing to like too many mediocre bands I think you’d have to treat it more like a blog-magazine. Basically, I think you’d have to separate out the writers and give them their own columns within the larger UtR banner, with perhaps an aggregated feed as the main column of the page, so people could actually get to know an individual writer’s style and taste, rather than thinking that UtR itself liked pretty much everything, which might seem to be the case sometimes. It would mean an extensive redesign of the site itself, and it would suddenly turn into a far bigger beast than it is at the moment, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this might be the best way for blogging techniques to be integrated into wider online magazines. It’s not a new idea, of course, because basically you’d be treating everyone like a columnist.
So there you go, maybe an idea for Under the Radar, and perhaps one for the future of blogzines or whatever you want to call them. I’d have been tempted to start something like this myself ages ago, but the idea of getting bloggers together is about as ambitious as trying to herd cats, and I’ve got far too much on my plate as it is. For an example of it being done well, albeit at a far greater scale than necessary, try ScienceBlogs, which is one of my favourite sites on the whole of the internets.
That’s essentially what I was hoping to do with Endearingly Ramshackle… more of a community/collective approach with someone flagging up a band and then perhaps the other main contributors of the site could give their view (this could even just be something as brief as shite/not shite) or there could just be a free for all between contributors and readers in the comments before any kind of collective ‘Formal Blog Opinion’ is formed.
Similar to some Japanese game mags that get 5 people to give a score out of 10 for a game, rather than one person giving a score of 83.6%. Much more reliably consistant for the reader that way.
As you say though, getting something like that to happen in practice can be tough, but maybe something like a yes/no/maybe from other UtR contributors at the end of every flagged up band could work for now? That also leaves things open for everyone to plainly see what the others opinions are and might create a more open environment for further debate in the comments where the original writer can come back with a defence to try to persuade anyone who didn’t like the music, or at least find out why they didn’t.
That way things become more like a discussion about music around a table in the pub, which let’s face it is the best way to do it!
I think that people think too much….
me and a bunch of pals decided to go the other direction and have a completely unpublicised and unlinked music blog. The idea being that we trusted our mates opinions on music which are pretty varied but at least apply some quality control, rather than biased press or hopeless meanderings around the web.
Inevitably some sites like SBT get linked to, but at least he doesn’t know what we say about him. It’s working pretty well, although the 100 visitors a day is starting to freak us a bit. Oh and everyone loves ‘Dan’
So, um, again, are we saying that myriad opinion is not as good as one person’s opinion, especially in blog form, because most blogs are run by wannabe journalists who want to hide behind the journal/diary persona in order to get away with the more caustic or challenging or embarrassing aspect of their individual tastes?*
If we are then we have just removed paper print magazines from the arena of relevance – they have MANY writers, all delivering their own opinions based on their own taste, albethey under the umbrella of their point of exposure: the magazine itself.
There are LOTS of multi-writer blogs out there (most NOT falling into this ropey category of blogzine) & they are getting along perfectly fine, doing their job & promoting music.
I’m just not getting the argument against differing opinions across the basis of a multi-headed writing staff. Is the main thrust here, really, “I don’t like what they like &, because I’m generally correct in my little bubble 99% of the time, they are therefore letting editorial quality slip”?
Or, is it, as I have asserted before, much like Cardiff & the over-population of promoters all scrambling for the same small oxygen port, too many bloggers/scenesters/liggers in Edinburgh/Scotland all flapping about in the slowly diminishing puddle of available local/new talent?
*by this I mean when something goes tits up & the comment reaction is negative because the blogger has misjudged their readership’s tolerance level or boundaries (taste-wise, politics-wise, etc.) & so draws down the “aren’t I the archetypal love to hate me goofball!” defensive line; in general, though, the diary/journal/personal aspect of the blog takes a back seat whilst the real job of delivering a personal opinion/taste sermon takes the lead.
I agree with Chutters.
Oh, I’m not thinking Matthew – merely questioning.
Chutters, thinking too much is better than your alternative: not thinking at all and just letting the lips flap anyway.
DC – no, I’m not writing off multi-writer blogs. I’m saying that throwing a lot of people at what is basically a blog will perhaps not quite do the trick, because that will muddy the individuality of the voice. Alternatively you can do it like a webzine where multiple people write for the same publication, which is another way of making it work.
What I’m talking about is more the question of how you maintain the essential qualities which make blogs special – most notably that direct connection with an individual which gives you a personal relationship with the site/publication/column/whatever. Add writers and you do kind of have to change that a little, and I was simply offering ScienceBlogs as an example of a site which has managed to publish a number of blogs which work really well as individual blogs, whilst also being really well integrated into a larger entity.
In relation to UtR, I think they write it like a magazine, but publish it a lot like like a blog which may be the reason for The Pop Cop’s slight discomfort with the results.
I was more attributing the ‘we’ at Pop Cop & a few other little grumblers I’ve tripped over in the past 3 months or so.
I have to say I am somewhat bemused that this is a question or topic for discussion at all. I think it’s boiling down to territorial pissing & short of getting personal I’d say this highlights the tact being used in ‘attacking’ what is seen as competition i.e. pointing out perceived shortcomings in order to gain traffic. Afterall, October/November/December are traditionally lean times for new releases.
Makes me wonder if something unrelated Pop Cop off & this is payback.
*pissed off Pop Cop, is what I meant to type – but didn’t.
October/November is a good time, isn’t it? I always thought Christmas and Summer were the lean times.
Anyhow, no I don’t see it as competitively motivated, not from my perspective anyway, and I don’t think Jason from the Pop Cop is like that either.
Personally I have been thinking a lot about how you grow a successful blog beyond the limits of what one person can achieve, without diluting the qualities which make it good in the first place.
Alternatively, if you wanted to learn the lessons about honesty, subjectivity and personal connection which blogs have taught established media and start a new posh magazine with a team of writers, how do you bring those lessons across effectively – what do you bring and what do you leave behind, because I don’t think you can do the same, except MORE!
That’s it, really. I wasn’t trying to say that anything was better in particular, more thinking about how professional I could become without losing the character of the site, how loose and conversational a magazine could become without losing its aura, how blogs can scale up without becoming bland and impersonal.
Just musing, really, and taking the opportunity to spit out an idea I’ve been idly turning over for a while without really putting that much thought into.
I’d totally go hear Some Young Pedro.
1.) As for the rest of this, I don’t mean to be dismissive but honestly, there’s a whole lot of false dichotomies and categories that don’t necessarily need to be set in stone being tossed about in this discussion.
2.) I’ve never considered myself to be a music critic, not in any way. I’ve no education in music or music history or even much experience in popular music culture and feel completely out of my league in judging whether or not something is really essentially good or bad or “important” in the grand scheme of things. Journalists are often, if not always, hired in this field to be music critics. But many of us bloggers review without feeling the need to approach an album or a band that doesn’t turn us on. Critics, in my opinion, do have the burden of commenting on those and can’t simply ignore the latest Iggy Pop record just because it’s crap.
Some Young Pedro just aren’t very good, sorry Tart.
I’m not trying to make judgements actually, nor trying to be clever, just wondering how the values of a one-person operation can be scaled to a larger one, if indeed they can.
in that utr have praised both my bands unequivocally, i am willing to follow them to the ends of the earth
and some young pedro are ACE
Of course I do think, but just not about mundane and irrelevant things like this topic.
I had to stand in the lobby outside the Bowery gig room while Some Young Pedro were on. They sounded terrible.
I love reading UTR, but I don’t look at the On The Radar feature as a critical review, I regard it as a showcase for new local bands. It appears that you don’t have to achieve much in terms of a following to get an article on there, a bedroom EP and a couple of support slots seem to be enough.
That’s absolutely fine though. It’s important that someone is prepared to pick up bands at the very beginning and give them a leg-up, so perhaps Pop Cop has missed the point by judging them on the basis of On The Radar being critical review rather than simply editorial column space.
I haven’t read much Pop Cop, but he said a lot that I agreed with in the article that ignited this debate. For me he was pretty much on the money about Some Young Pedro, Broken Records and Thomas Western.
I don’t see what the big deal is or why Popcop wrote his article. For me, anyone has the right to write about anyone or anything that they choose to. I love reading UtR as a music fan and as a promoter. I get far more pleasure from reading their blog and listening to Glasgow Podcart than anything else I can think of on the web.
Dylan hits the nail on the head for me. Ultimately what both UtR and Glasgow Podcart do is act as showcase for new Scottish bands. It’s not like toad or popcop or other blogs who pass their critical eye over everything. It’s all about promoting new Scottish music. Why should these bands have to have a following to be showcased and who is Popcop or anyone else to say they are not good enough to be written about??
Ultimately, we all have a choice. We can read about the bands, listen to them and decide whether we like them or we can just ignore it all. I see great similarities between what I do at Trampoline and what UtR do. When you come to my shows you might not like everything, you can’t please everyone but if there are only 12 bands worth reviewing in Scotland, are there only 12 bands worth putting on at a gig?
For me it’s all about choice, and I’d rather UtR and others kept doing what they do and giving me that choice.
Aye right, Chutters, you’re a deep thinker who spends hours contemplating the crucial issues of our time. The other one has bells on.
Euan, your comment reminds me of a comment on the UtR post actually – someone said that they thought the Pop Cop was basically right, but failed to see why it was a problem. I hadn’t thought about it from the ‘critical eye’ vs ’showcase’ point of view before, but it makes sense.
I don’t for one minute think Popcop is right.
But I do think what people like UtR and Glasgow Podcart do is completely different to what you and Popcop and others do. I also think what you do is completely different to somebody like Tart or myself.
I like choice. I like that there are lots of interesting blogs and pages to read. How can that ever be wrong. If music isn’t good I don’t listen to it. If a blog isn’t good I don’t read it. But I see no problem with people writing and supporting whatever and whoever they want.
Toad – my conceptual and analytical thinking is about as good as your art.
I think you mean my arse.
And to be fair to Some Young Pedro, I may not have been that keen, but quite a few folk at the Bowery that night really enjoyed them.
Actually, what am I talking about? My arse is brilliant.
To be fair to Some Young Pedro, the bowerys system couldn’t cope with the noise they made. I think you’d need to hear them in a different venue to fairly assess them.
Yep – really didn’t mean to sound that judgmental given how little I know about them. The system there really isn’t set up for guitar bands. It’s bloody great for acoustic stuff, but I thought the Foxx sounded way better at Electric Circus.
I think you’d need to hear them in a different venue to fairly assess them.
A different venue to me, preferrably.
Dylan – I’m not saying I particularly enjoyed the noise that evening, but I would not be so judgemental as to criticise them given that it was hard to make out anything other than noise in the Bowery.
And yes, I could imagine Jesus H Foxx sounding way better at Electric Circus. It’s a shame the Bowery don’t have the money to spend on equipment cause it’s a cool venue.
it’s potentially a great venue……
potentially. need a stage and some good equipment and they’d nail it.
Drunk Country: “too many bloggers/scenesters/liggers in Edinburgh/Scotland all flapping about in the slowly diminishing puddle of available local/new talent?”
Sorry folks, but he’s right. Let’s all find something else to write about.