Where do we go from Pitchfork?

Photo by Taylor Lorenz.

On January 17, news broke that Pitchfork would be folded into GQ, the men’s magazine owned by Condé Nast. A wave of layoffs followed, with nearly half of the editorial staff being dismissed.  

Pitchfork, the music criticism publication that started as a blog in the late 1990s, was the foremost authority of its kind. In the early 2000s, when Pitchfork was at its peak of popularity, the publication had the power to take an artist from the underground and thrust them into the mainstream. Their arguably intuitive but notorious ranking system uses a decimalized rating of albums on a scale of 0.0-10.0. Pitchfork’s scoring was a critical factor in the success of many artists—particularly those who at the time were still relatively unpopular. 

 “Pitchfork was one of the most culturally relevant blogs of the time. Their reviews were everything. They had enormous cultural capital,” Washington Post tech journalist Taylor Lorenz recalls. “It really meant something when you were written about on there.” 

Yet the platform soon faced criticism, initially from fandoms, for its rather authoritative method of assigning numbers to artists’ work, which was perceived as “elitist,” according to Lorenz. This scrutiny brought about questions of who was writing these reviews, what type of music was being reviewed, and which kinds of artists were consistently receiving higher ratings. Looking at the most reviewed artists and the artists with the highest average scores, there were virtually no women on these lists as of 2021. In 2018, Puja Patel assumed the role of editor-in-chief, signaling a shift toward a more inclusive approach to music coverage. This shift included expanding the range of music reviewed to include traditionally overlooked genres and a reevaluation of certain artists’ rankings. But the publication was already starting to lose its iron grip on the music industry. 

As Pitchfork’s cultural influence in the industry began to decline, streaming platforms emerged as the new primary authority, marking a shift in how audiences discover and consume media. Spotify and Apple Music came into prominence in the late 2000s and early 2010s. They quickly began to replace much of Pitchfork’s singular function—telling the public what was worth listening to. The algorithmic-driven model of music discovery was popularized by playlists curated to the user’s listening history and patterns, such as Spotify’s “Discover Weekly” and Apple Music’s “Discovery Station.” Algorithms, rather than music journalists, have become the front lines of music discovery. 

“As we progressed further into the 2010s, media just totally changed. People stopped getting their information from these websites and blogs, and they started getting all their information and discovering culture basically through social media. People started to get music recommendations from streaming—something that came up in the 2010s. So, there just wasn’t as much of a desire for music criticism,” Lorenz stated.

Algorithms based on data from third-party social media platforms, such as Instagram, Twitter (X), Facebook (Meta), and TikTok largely drive the current news market. Newsrooms now prioritize their online editorial content based on what will generate the most clicks and can ultimately make its way into the algorithms of big tech companies. Spotify’s music recommendation features, for example, are based on three layers of AI-driven algorithms—collaborative filtering, content-based filtering, and reinforcement learning—resulting in a hyper-curated listening experience. The Center for News, Technology and Innovation identifies that the gap between what newspaper outlets and the public deem relevant poses challenges for organization policies regulating algorithm-generated recommendations. Algorithm-driven, tailored content rather than fact-checked, copy-edited newsroom journalism threatens the taste-cultivating prestige of journalists, especially those who work for media organizations like Pitchfork. 

But the implications of highly data-driven algorithms have larger repercussions beyond the seeming absurdity of Spotify’s Daylist moods and listening patterns. Algorithm-pushed content also works to radicalize consumers—leading certain far-right groups to turn away from traditional media and towards misinformed, polarizing news. The goal of using these algorithms is to maximize user engagement—time spent on the platform itself is the ultimate goal, not necessarily the promotion of fact-checked journalism. For example, conservatives are the main visitors of websites Meta flagged as untrustworthy. Yet despite the relatively small percentage these sites make up, algorithms retain the power to thrust more consumers down a rabbit hole of clicks and polarizing comments. 

“People didn’t feel this way about journalists at all seven or eight years ago. People really liked journalists, and they liked reading people’s work. Really, I think you started to see this anti-journalist sentiment a decade ago, after GamerGate—but basically, along with the rise of the far-right, you started to see this enormous anti-journalist sentiment. People are less likely to subscribe to media organizations, they’re more likely to subscribe to opinion outlets, they don’t understand the difference between opinion and news, and they don’t value reporting,” says Lorenz. GamerGate was an online harassment campaign that targeted women in the video-gaming world who advocated for more inclusion. Those who perpetuated threats claimed to be manipulated by a left-leaning, corrupt media.  

The algorithms used by platforms such as Meta still pose problems for Congress, which remains notoriously gridlocked over regulations on online algorithms. “Without public support, the media just crumbles. And without institutional backers, the media crumbles,” Lorenz argues. In an attempt to address the misinformation and radicalization that proliferates on social media platforms, Congress created the United States Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Data Security in 2021. The subcommittee held a hearing several months after its creation, “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony Held from a Facebook Whistleblower.” Former Meta employee Frances Haugen testified during the hearing and urged lawmakers to force Meta to improve its platform. In particular, she addressed the spread of misinformation driven by algorithm-driven ranking and its features recommending posts that make users vulnerable to the spread of fake news and extremist ideologies. As a result, these polarizing ideologies aided in creating this animosity toward journalists and distrust of traditional media organizations. 

The digital media revolution of the 2010s across newsrooms led to the steady decline of print journalism and a shift toward online publishing that would fit the formats of Instagram, Meta, and X. But the fact-checking and copy-editing rules that apply in a newsroom do not transfer onto social media platforms. Social media platforms’ power and influence in delivering information to the public exposed traditional media outlets’ inability to adapt to emerging ways of consuming news. As a result, over the past few years, layoffs have hit media outlets such as the Los Angeles Times, Buzzfeed, and Sports Illustrated. However, for a democracy to survive, journalism cannot become obsolete—the industry must undergo radical changes to regain the trust and readership of the public.

There are ways that journalists can maintain a consistent audience and attract new readership, Lorenz argues. The social media world has left the public demanding more from the people who deliver news, and has produced a need for more substantial relationships between journalists and their readers. 

“You want to own a relationship with the audience and make it as direct as possible, because you can’t trust any of these companies to give you distribution,” Lorenz argues. Working towards gaining the trust of their readers is equally important. “People want to know who they’re getting their news from. Is it a bunch of rich, old, white men or is it other types of people? Who are the journalists we’re getting our news from? What are their ideologies? People want that kind of information in a way now, when they used to not ask those questions.” 

Lorenz argues that a subscription-based revenue model may be the best path forward for online media organizations, given the current market ecosystem. But independent brands like Pitchfork, Gawker, Buzzfeed, and Mic.Com will not be able to successfully carry out this transition—Lorenz believes they were “part of that first wave of digital media that did not survive.” And, if they’re not gone, “they’re a shell of their former selves.” Websites such as Defector, an employee-owned sports and culture website, 404 Media, an independent technology and internet outlet, or journalists’ personal Substacks can be an option. However, because these companies are “inherently niche,” Lorenz argues, “they’ll never be able to offer the same resources that a traditional media organization could’ve offered.”

Whether journalists will essentially need to become part-time content creators to attain a wider readership still remains up to debate. But the power of the social media algorithms and mass layoffs that have swept newsrooms across the country prove that traditional journalism cannot continue business as usual. A new wave of independent, taste-making news websites, like Pitchfork was, will inherit a fragmented media landscape. It is up to these news outlets to learn how to reach the reader again.

Taylor Lorenz is a technology columnist at the Washington Post. Previously, she worked as a technology reporter for the New York Times, the Daily Beast, and Business Insider. She primarily covers internet culture and the content creator industry. Her recently published book, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet, chronicles the social history of the Web and how it has reshaped global culture. The quotations from this article are from a conversation between the author and Lorenz. All quotations have been published with the explicit permission of the interviewee. 

Julianna Lozada is a staff writer at CPR and a senior at Columbia in the dual degree with Sciences Po. She is studying human rights with a specialization in Middle Eastern studies and a special concentration in sustainable development. You can probably find her creating WBAR playlists in Milstein or taking power naps on Butler lawn.