maloney.qxd
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I have about had it with some of the Reader’s brand of journalism. Peter Margasak’s December 5 article in Post No Bills is annoyingly peculiar. Its intro is dedicated to commending local artists for their resilience, as they release albums on their own indie labels. That would have been a great premise to stand by. However, Mr. Margasak then proceeds to review eight recent local indie releases that fail to discuss “first-class production values” that were so endearingly introduced, and positive words are few and far between. It is perfectly OK to offer an unfavorable review when it is validated and fair. From elementary school to J-school, writers are trained in a small number of easily remembered fundamental guidelines, among them the classic “Tell them what you’re going to tell them. Then tell them. Then tell them what you told them.” Finally, the writer blunders by discussing topics about which his brief but authoritative pontifications reveal he has less knowledge than is reasonably required to qualify for deliberation in a public forum.
(1) The delightful intro was not at all indicative of the heavily negative spin the article would quickly take and maintain. After reading the first paragraph, I thought the story would be a sort of special-interest feature on the perseverance of some of our local artists. Instead, I read little more than a collection of potshots taken at struggling local artists for lack of originality, substance, and general inaptitude. The reader is continually reminded of each artist’s influences, and the artists were in several cases then criticized for not being as good as “the originals.” In sum, the story does not flow logically at all, with its positive intro covering one topic and then its negative body covering a significantly different one. Not only were topical expectations not set in the intro, the reader is entirely misled about the story’s upcoming content.
