Once More, From the Trenches: One Sometime Employee's Blender Sendoff

Robert Christgau, who needs no introduction around here, and who was lately employed (among a few other notable outlets) by the now-deceased Blender as a contributing editor, chucks a few more words in the direction of Alpha Media's rapidly departing back. The part about the magazine (Marks and Levy refer to Craig Marks and Joe Levy, the final two editors-in-chief at the mag):

Blender was trivial and deeply into lists and really liked artists who had pretty breasts. Its politics were deeply buried or altogether nonexistent, although both Marks and Levy are savvy and deep-feeling progressives in their personal beliefs--and although no one ever tried to censor my barbs, which given the formal limitations of the 135-word record review weren't as numerous as I would have preferred. But it was also, as review editor Rob Tannenbaum put it in his mass email, "the most entertaining, informative, reliable and comprehensive music magazine in the world."

It goes on from there. The good news here is it sounds like Bob landed on his feet. The bad is further elucidated in the rest of his post: Jon Dolan, Jonah Weiner, and a host of other talented writers still very much in need of shelter; the sudden absence of a distinct, edited-but-not-bowdlerized critical voice that Christgau rightly pegs Spin as probably too cowardly to take up; and of course, the dire implications for what used to be thought of as a fulltime, sustainable career, and is now clearly anything but. Maybe they'll all blog more now.