Response 3: Drake at Radio City Music Hall, Still Haunted by Aaliyah

I read some interesting news this week on New York Times website. Apparently, a new rapper on the scene known as Drake, had a concert recently at New York City's very own, Radio City Music Hall. It was an interesting article to read about, because I always find the subject of music journalism to be very attention drawing. (After all, one of my many aspirations is to become a music journalist.) I thought the article was rather interesting, because the topic was all about Drake's concert attributed to Aaliyah. But I particularly noticed the style in which Jon Caramanica wrote the article, because it's something I've been looking at a lot lately with different writers.

Today in class we talked about giving a person in a story a personality, without misleading the audience and without inserting your own bias. We addressed it, and we came up with an answer, but to be perfectly honest, I think it's something that changes from article to article. It depends on the writer, and the subject-content. It's really easy to insert bias without even realizing, and I think in this specific article, it was really easy to see that Caramanica, (and every other music journalist for the matter) faces a huge challenge when writing specifically about a musician, or anything music related.

There's a challenge because often times with music, we find ourselves being automatically biased. It's hard to write about music without being biased. It's all about asking the right questions and finding the right answers, to show what you are trying to say, without actually openly saying it.

Throughout the article, I pinpointed a few areas that were particularly biased on Caramanica's part, but they didn't do anything necessarily bad for the article. They came before facts, and I found that to be interesting, because the facts sort of backed up the bias. I can't say that I would follow Caramanica's model for music journalism though, because I would try to be less biased. But really, it is difficult.

I've been writing for a music blog recently called campusounds.com, (nothing published yet, but very soon...!) and I've personally encountered these challenges. It's really hard to write about someone you already know, especially when their music is good, because you just want everyone to know that their music is that good, but at the same time, you don't want to just say, "Oh they're my favorite." It's an interesting dynamic we have going with music writing, because we're always trying to relay what we mean without actually saying it. But I guess that applies to all journalism, doesn't it?

Back to the NY Times article though, Caramanica approached all of the points about the concert really well, but told it like a story, and less like news. I think this happened because it's definitely a feature story, nothing you'd find on the front page of the Times. It's interesting to learn and decipher the difference between a feature and a hard-news story, something I'd never really paid attention to. I prefer reading feature stories, because I sometimes find myself getting impatient with hard-news stories. I'd rather just hear about it through the television news or streaming video, but that's just me. It's funny how much work goes into putting together a hard news story, and how quickly people will skim through it to get all the facts. It's quite a thought.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/30/arts/music/30drake.html?_r=1&ref=music