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A blogger at the Princeton Record Exchange Club takes jazz media to task for “vacuous writing, PR cliches, and tame thinking," singling out Downbeat and Jazz Times as primary suspects. The writing and argument is a little rough around the edges, but it's a provocative point. Like the author, I subscribe to both magazines, and there's no doubt that they represent the mainstream jazz “establishment," such as it is. But are they really damaging jazz, as he suggests? Would the music be better off without such journals? I think that’s a pretty hard case to make. Both magazines continue to provide a great deal of exposure for both established and younger artists, and most issues that I page through yield a number of things that make my reading time well spent. And while the 1950s, 60s and 70s produced a lot of great jazz writing, I can attest from my searches through old issues of Downbeat that there were plenty of lame reviews as well.
