Music Journalists Stuck in a Quandary over their Audience

Howard Mandel's October 7 article delves into the discord between "traditional" and new-age music journalists at a policy summit presented by the Future of Music Coalition Conference. While the traditionalists maintain that the art should be accessible yet still educational and enlightening to all, the new thinkers tout social media as the savior of music journalism, seemingly claiming that the new audience is not, well, the audience, but rather advertisers and record labels. In other words, new music journalists are pushing for an emphasis on better marketing of the art through social media, and losing interest in developing content. 

....Wow. I can see good points on both sides--art needs to be accessible.....but we do always need to increase audiences in whatever way we can. However, despite the many times we've learned that word-of-mouth marketing can trump any critic's review, I absolutely cannot agree that the role of good content is dead. Mandel put the entire dilemma perfectly in the title of this article: "Future of Music Journalism: It's about the Audience (?)."

Personally, I agree with the sentiment that we should be able to both write about music in such a way that it does both illustrate and entertain, while still secretly escorting the reader to a higher level of education through a series of big-picture connections. Apparently this view is one that is seen as attainable only in a perfect world (though it shouldn't be that way).  Perhaps this is too base of an observation for the high-level thinking that occurred at this particular panel, but it seems to me that there is a middle ground, a "happy medium," if you will. 

--Chelsie