Headlines

May 05, 2008

Stereogum's Scott Lapatine: 'I'm still running the site...A lot of what was reported about the sale was inaccurate. Our editorial isn't going to change'

Cnet | Read Full Story >

CNET:

Even before Buzznet acquired Stereogum, the blog had strong ties to big business. Among the site’s backers was the Pilot Group, an investment firm headed by former AOL honcho Bob Pittman. The real trouble for Stereogum came after Buzznet bought it. That was when it was reported that Universal Music Group was a Buzznet investor. To some observers, this meant that one of the major music companies was now in a position to influence Stereogum’s editorial content.

Scott Lapatine, the site’s founder and editor in chief, didn’t want to delve too deeply into such criticism but did say there’s no way anyone except him is going to steer the direction of editorial content. “I’m still running the site,” Lapatine said. “A lot of what was reported about the sale was inaccurate. Our editorial isn’t going to change.”


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Previous comments include

#1 anon says:

well, that's all nice and dandy, but unless the new owner signed some bizarre unprecedented document that states they won't ever have any input, it still brings up questions.

#2 brad says:

It also doesn't help that Scott hired a ton of other people to write articles for the site that has caused an extreme drop off in enjoyable posts. It's no surprise that they stopped signing their articles, because some of the comments were getting brutal towards the non-Scott posts.

#3 Dean Wermer says:

Stereogum lost its voice/independence some time ago, so the notion that it is not now going to change is silly - it's too late. It is now nothing more than a place that regurgitates press releases/PR/hype. It took Rolling Stone decades to become useless, it took Spin quite a number of years to become equally useless. In the age of the internet, where things move much faster, it appears that Stereogum is reaching that point in record time.

#4 raspberryjones says:

Above posts presume, that even when Scott was writing, Stereogum was in fact useful. In the immortal bellow of John McLaughlin, "WRRROOOOOONNNG!"

#5 brad says:

There's a wide gap between useful and enjoyable. I made no assumptions towards Stereogum's use.

#6 Dean Wermer says:

Point taken.
There probably will be a site(s) that survives and prospers merely taking the route Stereogum is proceeding along. It will be, however, for those of us who love music and reading about music, not all that enjoyable. [and query whether pitchfork, if it desired, could kill stereogum's traffic by giving more prominent placement to the "news" portion of its site]

#7 LOLZ says:

Stereogum is the new rolling stone, boring, corporate and evil, evil, evil

corporate magazines AND blogs SUCK!!!


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