Beyond celebrity: A Slate piece on the write-around

This is a great Slate piece focusing on the cult of access, the ever evolving world of well-handled "public figures" and the handlers who make them so. Music journalism is far from exempt in this game, and the cover is one such place where mags get access in trade for censored or artist controlled stories. There is at least one music magazine out there that has routinely bartered for such access with high profile (mostly female) pop stars only to openly mock them throughout the whole profile, showing the exercise in its most advanced and cynical form - "sexy" front cover at all costs, even when the consensus of the editorial department is that the subject is not worth a fair representation.

Quoting this part mostly as a way to encourage anyone who has not read Gay Talese's amazing "write around" celebrite profile, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" to click through and spend some time with one of the best pieces of mag writing ever produced:

Even the celebrity profile can be transformed with write-around investigative reporting. Consider that the story some call the greatest magazine story ever written, Gay Talese's classic "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," was a write-around. Talese painted a portrait of Sinatra from the outside, spending long, tedious hours with his flunkies and hangers-on, capturing the ripples and crosscurrents of influence and ego among the nine circles of sycophants who surrounded him that cumulatively told a story of raw power.

Access itself is not all it's cracked up to be. There's the journalistic equivalent of Stockholm syndrome. I know, I've suffered from it. I find it hard to be as cutting, or even as critical, as I really feel about people who allow me to enter their zone of privacy. I blame my parents for teaching me manners—the best investigative journalists don't have the best manners. The best investigative reporters might be called "sociopaths for truth." I think you know the type I'm talking about. And the very best of these are often good at faking empathy and then coldly eviscerating the empathized-with one.

Magazines, Bring Back the Write-Around!

By Ron Rosenbaum
Posted Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007, at 10:54 AM ET

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This year's book

Best Music Writing 2008 will arrive in shops September 8, 2008.

Best Music Writing 2007 has been available since October 22, 2007. Get it from:

Your favorite indie book shop, Powell's Books, for $15.95

Or:
Border's, for $15.95

Barnes & Noble, for $14.35

Books A Million, for $11.51

Amazon, for $10.85

Praise for the BMW Series

“A diverse time capsule that grapples with pop music’s most engaging issues.”—Blender

“The stories behind the music can be as inspiring as the music itself…
will likely inspire the reader to seek out a lot of new music.”—New York Press

“…one of the few regular publications to be dependably open to every type of music imaginable…Whether an authoritative aggregation or merely a starting point,
it’s a shame it’s only an annual.”—Relix

“In all it’s quite a celebration of the vast enterprise known as music.”—Signal to Noise

Praise for the 2006 Edition

“Our favorite year-end read.”—Cleveland Scene

“Terrorism, sexual misconduct, and wholesome nostalgia, treated with a discernible backbeat and sprightly writing make for an excellent anthology.” ––Booklist

“the book finally reflects the current state of not just music journalism but music listening… These essays encapsulate a chilly, malefic year for music indeed.” —The Stranger

“Da Capo’s Best Music Writing 2006’s essays create a confrontational, challenging, and varied portrait of music criticism that highlights a visceral reaction to music over academic posturing…”—VenusZine