Music lovers have responded angrily after a flagship daily announced it would stop publishing reviews of classical, jazz and world music records.
The Scotsman is reported to have told readers on Saturday about changes to its music coverage, which will see it focus in future on rock, pop and folk reviews.
The move led to jazz musician Tommy Smith setting up a petition calling on the Johnston Press-owned title to continue covering all music genres, which gained more than 800 signatures in just a few days.
It is understood that The Scotsman is also ending its music coverage throughout the week and will just publish content in its Monday and Saturday editions only.
Mr Smith launched his petition on Saturday – Robbie Burns Day – saying that a jazz CD which features him was the last to be reviewed by the paper.
He wrote: “On this sacred day, 25th January 2014, the Scotsman newspaper has taken the budgetary decision to end reviewing world music, classical and jazz recordings, which is a heart-breaking bowdlerization of minority art forms and another cessation for the popularization and liberality of creativity.
“They may publish occasional reviews in the future but only from their syndication agreements, as long as they don’t have to pay for them. Who knows where they’ll appear, as their current Saturday magazine is also going to the four winds.
“The final jazz CD reviewed for the Scotsman is printed today and coincidentally is for an ECM album featuring Arild Andersen, Paolo Vinnacia and myself, entitled MIRA, a red giant star.
“It is irrelevant whether the review is rated one star or a sea monster five, what is relevant is that the recording is reviewed for the public to read.
“Gratefully, the Scotsman will continue to review rock/pop and folk music, but should there be favouritism among musical genres?”
The petition, which has now been closed, gained 834 signatures within a few days from across the UK and many of those who signed it were critical of the decision.
Duncan Lunan wrote: “A quality newspaper has an obligation to cover all fields of the arts and music.”
And George Burt wrote: “It’s incomprehensible that Scotsman is going to ignore large parts of the Scottish scene. Daft and counterproductive…”
Johnston Press had not responded to requests for a comment at the time of publication.
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As a former daily music critic…I would *far* rather see even a big paper like The Scotsman put its inevitably limited resources for arts editorial into covering local live music (including classical, jazz and other minority interests). There is no shortage of well-informed CD reviews out there, but the local paper can be the only place that covers a local performance.
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If it were April 1 I’d have chosen this as the fool. If you are going to have a music/CD review, review all the genres. It is just as likely that a Springsteen fan will listen to some Bach, or a Beethoven fan go to the music festivals. Another sign of JP madness. Maybe they assume that jazz or classical is for ‘older’ folk and don’t need them in their bright digital future, or perhaps the reporter that used to review the classical/jazz is now too busy taking photographs. What next? Sports coverage, so long as it’s football and rugby, but not cricket!
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I’m afraid I can see the Scotsman’s point of view here. It is simply covering its readers’ favourite forms of music. Jazz, in particular, can be an unbelievably snobby and elitist form of music listened to by a tiny minority. You have to cater for your readership and the fairly small reaction in the petition shows it’s simply not a real issue.
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In my 30-plus years writing about, among other things, music and arts, for a big regional newspaper I saw specialist arts writers and critics all fall by the wayside, victims of cuts. The management viewpoint seems to be that we cannot afford the luxury of arts coverage, an argument that never seems to be used in relation to sport, even though music and theatre puts as many bums on seats as football in many towns and cities.
The end result is newspapers in which theatre and music reviews are written by people with no knowledge or even particular passion for theatre and music, simpler because it’s a bit cheaper that way. The philistine bean-counters should know that, yes, actually, the readers DO notice the difference. The kind of people who bother to go to the theatre are often the kind of people who take an interest in their community and are also likely to buy the local paper…at least until they realise that it is insulting their intelligence with its coverage of something they hold dear.
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Suicidal! Scotsman bosses: “Our printed readership is in general ageing. Who probably listens to classical music more – ah those older readers? Who, in general, doesn’t buy a paper – the under 35s and so doesn’t even read our pop music reviews.
“Yes let’s annoy the older readers and stop our classical music reviews. The younger readers don’t matter because they don’t read our papers anyway and have far better online sources for pop music reviews. Job done, we’ve decimated our circulation in one easy move.”
Turn off the lights please – we can’t afford the bill.
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Why alienate so many readers in this way ? Plain wrong-headed…
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“Hello and welcome to JP Jazz Club…..not so niiiiiiiiiiiice”
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As long as costs are reduced at a rate greater than the decline in sales, newspaper publishers will not give two hoots about the impact of cost-cutting has on circulation figures or petitions demanding such decisions are reversed. A few hundred disenchanted soon-to-be ex-readers… who cares as long as bottom line savings are made? Please disabuse yourselves of the notion our industry is about growing or maintaining sales; senior management gave up on that years ago.Newspapers are being managed to closure, after which the digital future will become apparent: fewer titles and jobs; lower revenues and costs.
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Barnaby’s quite right – and the local performers would prefer it that way too, I’m sure. But hey, that would involve reviewers & reporters actually being at the performances, when they could be “harvesting content” from the internet or from that armful of free CDs that just landed on their desks. And of course if you confine your coverage to free CDs etc, what you get is rock/pop & folk. Classical & jazz doesn’t dish it out so liberally, so you have to WORK at it. Oh no, can’t afford that…!
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