Anger and Sadness over the Pitchfork-GQ Merger: a “Crisis and Tragedy” in Music Journalism

Music website Pitchfork has been folded into men’s magazine GQ, resulting in wide layoffs including the departure of the publication’s editor-in-chief Puja Patel.

Condé Nast– the media conglomerate that owns Vogue and The New Yorker, among other publications– bought Pitchfork in 2015. Pitchfork, founded as an independent online publication in 1996, and brands itself as ‘the most trusted voice in music’.

Now, although nearly 44% of the publication’s readership are women, Pitchfork has merged with men’s magazine GQ, formerly Gentlemen’s Quarterly, though not with other Condé Nast titles Vogue or Vanity Fair. Despite the publication’s original male-dominated indie-music output, the publication had fostered a forum for a range of women and non-binary writers from around 2010 onwards.

Pitchfork is the latest in a string of music newsrooms to hit hard times. In 2020, Q Magazine, widely regarded as a cornerstone of rock journalism in the UK, closed after 34 years. NME magazine stopped printing a weekly magazine in 2018.

Anna Wintour, the Chief Content Officer of Condé Nast, announced the changes in a memo to company staff on the 17th of January.

“Today we are evolving our Pitchfork team structure by bringing the team into the GQ organization,” wrote Wintour. “This decision was made after a careful evaluation of Pitchfork’s performance and what we believe is the best path forward for the brand so that our coverage of music can continue to thrive within the company.”

Founder of Pitchfork, Ryan Schreiber, took to  X/Twitter, stating that he was “extremely saddened by the news that Condé Nast has chosen to restructure Pitchfork and lay off so much of its staff, including some who’ve been integral to its operations for many years/decades.”

Two unions representing Pitchfork staff said they “categorically condemn” the decision.

“The people who make award-winning music journalism … deserve better than to be treated like disposable parts,” wrote Susan DeCarava, president of the News Guild of New York.

Music critics have pointed to the pivotal role of “robust music media” like Pitchfork. It can ”expose their work to a wider audience, mythologising and storytelling in a way that leaves more of a lasting impression on listeners than marketing has ever managed”, suggested Laura Snapes of The Guardian.

The publication’s apparent demise has been described by music journalists as a “massive loss in music journalism” and “a death knell for the record review”.

Analysis: The Pitchfork-GQ Merger: Mainstream Music Journalism in Crisis and Tragedy

The Merger is a crisis and tragedy of mainstream Music Journalism, writes Per Capita’s Music Editor, Jermaine Lawal-Adewale.

Pitchfork– whether you love it or hate it, or love to hate it– is indisputably one of the biggest names in music journalism. But, a considerable degree of doubt has been shed over the publication’s staying power with recent news of its merger with GQ Magazine.

The merger sits as one of many tragic decisions regarding music journalism, and thus the wider musical culture in which it sits. Irrespective of whether people take heed or pleasure in consuming Pitchfork’s media, it sits as the biggest of kingpins in a fairly small town when it comes to the musical landscape.

Beside the immediate layoffs caused by the move, Condé Nast’s decision to merge strikes as seismic. Not only does the merger limit the scope of Pitchfork’s influence – merging with a publication as different from itself as GQ – but it stifles their impact too.

Pitchfork will no longer be able to put such a degree of effort into the discovery of many influential acts and ground-breaking news stories in the music world as it has done. Look no further than the slew of articles titled “These Artists Shaping the Future of Music”, a recurrent article which symbolises the publication’s sustained effort to spotlight talent, as well as the annual Pitchfork Festival which fulfils the same purpose.

What Condé Nast’s move does is speak to a wider phenomenon of companies buying valuable pieces of media and running them into the ground before they are subsumed by a wider corporate framework.

This merger by no means places Pitchfork at the bottom of the food chain either – it could do worse than having sister publications such as Vogue (in all of its geographical iterations) and GQ, neither of which miss the mark when it comes to notoriety. But, such a merger undeniably picks away at the legacy of a voice that has consistently been the loudest in the room.

Wintour claims an “evolution” is undergoing at Pitchfork. But the remark reads as ironic when considering that a key player in ushering new voices into the musical sphere feels well on its way to being relegated to merely an additional wing of a men’s magazine.

What could well be the end of Pitchfork as we know it does not necessarily have to be a death-knell for the entirety of music journalism, though the blinkers should remain firmly on when it comes to assessing this.

There are plenty of other voices like the myriad Substack publications – or even lesser-known independent platforms, such as the one on which this article lies– that deserve to be spotlit, but whether this will translate into amplified levels of success is something that will remain to be seen.

Pitchfork losing a few of its spears is only further proof of the bleak trajectory on which musical culture is firmly headed, so long as capital reigns over culture.

Reporting by Suchir Salhan, Commentary and Analysis by Jermaine Lawal-Adewale.