The Jazz Internet, Part 2: Peter Hum

This is the second installment in a series of interviews with jazz critics and bloggers on the topic of the internet as a medium for jazz writing.

Peter Hum, who is also a pianist, writes for the Ottawa Citizen, producing Jazzblog.ca, the newspaper's, well, jazz blog. His is one of the few blogs dealing purely with jazz to be affiliated with a major North American newspaper, and is, along with Ben Ratliff and Nate Chinen (of the New York Times) one of the biggest names in newspaper writing for the jazz community. I spoke with him via e-mail about the way that the blog format, and the internet, has changed the art of jazz criticism.

JW: Okay. This is the first in a series dealing with the way the internet and jazz writing interact, and the ways that the internet has changed that writing. Your blog is written for the Ottawa Citizen, a major Canadian newspaper. Let's start at the baseline - why did you choose the online medium for your work?

PH: I'm on staff at the newspaper, and back in the day -- late 2007/early 2008 -- we were all encouraged to blog. I simply jumped at the opportunity, without really knowing what it would entail. I don't think my bosses knew either. As we do it here, the bloggers are very autonomous. While I'm blogging, as you say, for the Citizen, I'm on a very long leash, totally self-assigning, able to write as much as little as my other duties at the paper allow.

I'll say now that the pluses of blogging,  compared to writing for a daily newspaper, quickly became apparent. Especially to someone used to the dailiy newsroom grind, blogging's attractive because it affords increased speed and self-sufficiency, and more interaction with readers and other bloggers. I'm glad for the ability to embed video and other media, and the freedom to try different approaches when writing. There are no limits on length. In short, I can really stretch as a blogger, while I'm more constrained writing for the paper. My colleague Doug Fischer kids that I've landed a dream job -- but for the fact that I'm not paid a second salary for blogging.

So yeah, there are definitely concrete advantages, like video, and that's a big deal. But what about the actual substance of what's being written? Do you think that how you, or anyone, writes about jazz will change in the transition from print to screen?

Speaking about my own work, I basically get to write more and to write more deeply. What's key is that when I write in print, it's for a mainstream daily newspaper that values jazz, but has coverage of everything else in the mix. Left alone to blog, I'm less constrained, as I said before.

Speaking more generally about how "jazz writing is changing because of the Internet is harder to do." Is that what you want me to address with respect to "substance?" If so, then I think that the Net simply gives everyone a platform if they're so inclined. Technology has lowered the barrier to access and just as everyone can make a CD now, everyone can write about jazz as they see fit. That's allowed some great jazz writing to flourish -- Ethan [Iverson], Darcy [James Argue]-- and it's also meant that there are lesser efforts too. But I don't see, or am unaware, of an easy-to-spot change apart from a potential for more unedited jazz writing on people's screens. Some of it is more detailed and thoughtful, some of is more superficial and pure promo. I guess it's up to readers to suss it all out from the wealth of sources that now go beyond Downbeat, JazzTimes and the New York Times, so to speak. 

I should add that the other change is, of course, the ability for musicians to blog or write about music themselves, sometimes in a semi-self-promotional but still informative way. Dave Liebman's monthly newsletters would be a good example. That allows them to reach fans and prospective fans without relying on the official journals of record. The same dynamic exists in journalism at large, and basically it doesn't so much as change what's written as opposed to enlarge the definition of news, I think.

I wasn't heading anywhere in particular in regards to substance, but I'm glad you went there. The point about musicians writing is interesting as well - in the 1950s and 1960s, the relationship between critics and musicians could be either dangerous or friendly, perhaps too much so (Barry Ulanov and Lennie Tristano, for example, or Leonard Feather and anyone). Do you see the internet changing that relationship?

Yes. Maybe it was ever thus in New York, but for critics elsewhere, the Internet and social media have collapsed the distance between musicians and writers.  We're all rubbing shoulders via Facebook, Twitter, email and the like. My impression is that it's more chummy than ever between musicians and the people who write about them.

That may be no problem at all for one subset of jazz journalists, but if you come from mainstream journalism, things can be a bit trickier.There's a column by Nate Chinen about his use of Facebook (which doesn't include contacy with musicians) that's on point.

I've read that, and you're right. I might be too far on a limb here, but do you think that just the way that a blog works encourages a feeling of contact with musicians, even if that contact isn't there? The more or less informal nature of it, the way information is gathered...? This is leading up to my next question. 

I'm not sure I fully get your question, and I'm not sure if there's a yes/ no answer. If I had to choose, I think the answer is no.

The distinction I'd raise is between reporting and writing/blogging.

Yes, the reporting has in many instances become more informal, thanks to the use of social media. And yes, that informality can be reflected in the resulting blogging.It's not necessarily a bad thing, provided that it's a tonal thing, and not an indicator of journalistic laziness, in my opinion.

But the blogging is ultimately what the blogger wants it to be, ranging from informal,fast and loose at one extreme to rigorous and even academic at the other. Take Ethan Iverson's blogging, for example. It's solid journalism/opinion-writing.Maybe he's the exception that proves your "rule?" I do the whole range, from scraping stuff off of Facebook if I think it has news value to reprinting Tweets to offering transcripts of lengthy interviews and so on. I like the contrast, for one thing, and as long as I don't get too lazy journalistically, then I think I'm OK.

One issue may be whether the blogger wants to do something that has journalistic rigour or not. I can think of many jazz blogs -- usually by musicians or aspiring musicians -- that are more like diaries than DownBeat, and they're fine. Sometimes they're very good. I can think of other blogs, some are the review-based ones, that seem to me less strong, because the bloggers involved are trying to be authoritative, but they haven't done their home work, they're not grounded by good reporting, and so on. The issue here is that the bloggers in question are basically lone wolves, nimble and empowered on one hand but also unedited and unaccountable to anyone except a spell-checker.

What do you think?

I think you're right - and I'll say you did a better job of answering that question than I would have. Props.

I mentioned this in another interview, and I think it has relevance here. There's an impermanence, if only perceived, to the internet. There are lots of times when I wish I could be writing a book, on paper, rather than writing on a computer screen, so removed from the actual act. And the fact that there's so much out there, but there's so little control over what you see or what you produce, is often frustrating. It's much like the difference between having a huge vinyl collection as opposed to a huge iTunes collection. You can fit more in iTunes, but is it as satisfying? I'm drifting away from the original question, I know, but these are very much linked in my mind. I also think that, even though Facebook and Twitter can produce great things that can inspire a lot of thought, I always wonder how much greater those same things would be in a medium that is at its base more thoughtful. Am I making sense? 

What you're describing, I think, is some kind of opposition or tension between quantity and quality. The argument that recorded music meant more to people when it was more scarce does make resonate with me. First, I'm old enough to have bought jazz on vinyl when only vinyl was available, so I can recall the tremendous significance that taking a Dexter Gordon or Keith Jarrett or Kenny Wheeler LP out of the library had for me, and contrast that with someone today getting Coltrane's entire discography in a night on the Web, but not being able to really take in the music beyond possessing it.

Whether the same analogy applies to jazz writing, now freely available on the Net, as opposed to previously only in DownBeat or JazzTimes, let's say, is not that clear to me, though. I don't think, as good as some Internet jazz writing is, that jazzblogs have devalued the traditional oracles of written jazz wisdom. Not yet anyway. That phenomenon, I think, is more strongly felt in the world of daily newspaper journalism, where really the only play left is to transform into an online company that puts out a paper product -- or doesn't.

But in any event, there's no point being a Luddite. Even if we were to start from the premise that some (or much of) the writing on the Net is inferior -- jazz-related writing or otherwise, I would stop short of blaming the medium per se and fault the people who are writing, albeit more easily enabled by Net-based tools. We still have the means to separate the wheat from the chaff if it matters to us. Basically, you have to be optimistic that the quality of someone's work will be clear, will speak for itself. And since I have a high opinion of jazz lovers I think that can figure out good jazz writing from bad if it matters enough to them. 

Regarding your comments about Facebook and Twitter, yes they generate mountains of information/opinion and much of it isn't thoughtful. But for media, and that includes jazz writers and publications, it would be suicidal to be nostalgic, pine for the pre-digital days, and eschew social media because the trend simply is circulation down, Internet use up. So you have to be there, and in particular via Facebook and Twitter and the like, because that's where people increasingly are hanging out and increasingly how getting their information -- moreso than from aggregate sites like Drudge or Huffpo, and moreso than from media websites proper. Via social media, people find their oracles, whether they're friends, associates, or people with some standing, and then they swap leads and the like, and the best purveyors of information win. Again, you have to be optimistic that the best information and opinions matter, whether they're from a media staffer or a really smart and capable freelancer, from DownBeat or RTB or some blogger you don't know about who makes a good point that somehow spreads like wildfire.

Definitely. I didn't mean to sound too nostalgic! I have vinyl, but I'm glad I have the resources available to have and hear more music than ever would have been possible otherwise. The same goes for RTB. 

I agree with your comments about the wheat and chaff of the internet. Let me extrapolate from that - I promise I'm not asking the same question again. Do you think that there is a hierarchy in the online jazz community? (I don't mean that to sound pejorative - hierarchies can be useful, even necessary, structures for any community).

Things probably shake out so that there's a crude consensus about some, but not all, of the good sources of information.(You could also arrive at a hierarchy if everyone's metrics were shared, I suppose, for what little that's worth.) I remember that Ethan compiled his history of jazz bloggery, and that would be one example of an (at least) momentary canon. I've seen one or two other Top 10 jazz blog lists and the Jazz Journalists Association names its faves every year. But if there's a hierarchy the danger is that it's going to miss out on up-and-comers and grow complacent with respect to the perennial heavies. It's probably the same deal with critic's polls and the like.

My problem with saying who's hot and who's not these days is that I spend so much time creating and editing content (jazz and much more) for my employer, that I don't really have time to survey everything that's out there. Yes some of the newer blogs deserve attention, but every minute I'm reading a blog is time spent not blogging too. Plus, I'm kind of a nationalist, to be frank, and the blogs that I'm checking out above all are the Canadian jazz blogs.