No Likee

Troy Johnson (former music editor for SD City Beat), I owe you an apology. I always thought you were a little bit pretentious and sensed a great deal of self importance. I was also shocked at how tan you were when I saw you filming Fox Rox a few years ago (not that that has anything to do with your personality) But you know what, you ran a really great ship over at City Beat. I don't really know what's going on over there. I know the new music editor Nathan Dinsdale has only been on board for a few months now, but I don't like the direction the weekly is going. I've been reading City Beat regularly for 5 years now and it's a Wednesday highlight for me personally.

The great thing about City Beat is it's focus on local music. That's why I was troubled to read that SD Dialed In Rosey's column "Local Only" and "Notes from the Smoking Patio" is going the way of cassette tapes. Especially troubling is a email response to a complaint by Dave Rolland, head editor for City Beat:

We're actually working on a replacement feature that would incorporate some
of what Locals Only offers. Beauty, as always, is in the eye of the
beholder. Some people like to read about the same local bands every week;
others like to read about touring bands coming through town. We've begun to
tire of the Locals format. Over the last couple of years, it's come to feel
a little too much like public relations for local bands, and we'd like to make better use of the space. Sometimes you have to kill your babies and try something new to keep things fresh. Hopefully, you'll like the new feature.

Well I like hearing about our local bands every week, but I can see how it's many of the same bands. Public relations for local bands? Duh man. These bands don't have publicists or PR teams behind them. They have to use whatever exposure they can get. Their are plenty of sites to read about touring bands. City Beat has great pieces on touring bands already when their coming through town. I thought the music section was pretty darn good as is. It wasn't broken, so why fix it? I don't like to kill babies, thank you very much Dave Rolland. Does this spell the end for City Beat. No, it's still better than most things published in San Diego. But if the music section is going to turn into Pitchfork the weekly I don't want to read it.

You can read a lot more about this (better written too!) here, here, here, and especially here.

Fin.