MONTREAL (CUP)—In a world where even the red, flowing Rolling Stone emblem is having trouble moving magazine copies off the rack, Mark Richardson is feeling optimistic about the future of music journalism.
Editor-in-chief of Pitchfork, the world’s most visited independent music writing website, Richardson’s at the helm of a ship that is retaining many tricks of the old media’s trade.
Pitchfork maintains tight editorial control, doesn’t have comment sections on its articles, and doesn’t tweet back at its followers. In many ways, it’s still a magazine, rather than a website. And yet it’s the de facto taste-making music site of the 21st century. A Pitchfork review can make or break a musical career.
Despite living and breathing music and music journalism, it took Richardson several years to refine his writing style. Then, in 1998, he went from odd writing jobs to writing steadily for the then-three-year-old website.
“You know it was very, very small back then, it was just this tiny thing,” he says. “So when I talk about writing for Pitchfork in the ’90s, it was just a really different world.”
Fast-forward through the last decade and newspapers and magazines are now in precarious financial positions, while the internet has taken over. Pitchfork itself is getting more than four million unique visitors a month.
“Print still has some advantages visually, with tactile experiences, and longer pieces, and those type of things,” says Richardson. Still, he acknowledges that the newspaper’s heyday is unlikely to return, but he holds out hope for the industry, explaining that it simply has yet to figure out a new, more profitable, business model.
“I feel like there’s a possibility that there’s something looming that we haven’t quite envisioned yet, that will be of higher quality than things are now… At least, I hope so,” he says.
Pitchfork’s success story is certainly refreshing to online journalists hoping to find some work in an industry of temporary gigs and unpaid internships. To them, Richardson has only one bit of advice: patience.
“If you love to write, and especially if you love writing about art and culture, there’s nothing wrong with doing that part-time, for months or years,” he says, pointing out that publications will be willing to pay writers money for their writing when they’re good enough to get noticed.
That being said, the one question every journalist is looking for an answer is simple; what does one have to do to get a job in the business? The answer, according to Richardson, isn’t all that surprising: intern.
“It’s not too much of a mysterious process, other than we’re looking for people that want nothing more than to be involved in the world of music journalism, and also seem like they are going to work really hard,” he notes. “Making it clear that you want to do whatever you can to help is the best thing. Those are the interns you tend to notice more, pay attention to, and then eventually want to help out.”