Pouring One Out for Pitchfork

On Wednesday, Jan. 17, media conglomerate Condé Nast revealed that it would be laying off staff at the online music publication Pitchfork and merging the website with men’s magazine GQ. “Today we are evolving our Pitchfork team structure by bringing the team into the GQ organization,” wrote Anna Wintour, chief content officer at the venerable company that also publishes The New Yorker, Vogue, and Vanity Fair, in a memo to staffers that was first reported by Semafor and obtained by Rolling Stone. After 28 years and countless album reviews — scored, with mock-scientific precision, on Pitchfork’s signature 0.0 to 10.0 scale — the music-criticism source that came of age with the internet had suffered its first major setback. The site isn’t over (as of now, its future under GQ is unsure), but on social media, voices from around the music journalism sphere mourned it like it was.