Results tagged “times” from Slipped disc

The Times of London, which used to call itself a newspaper of record, has turned into the puff paper of the record industry.

Last week, the Times published a piece by its media correspondent about 13 year-old Faryl Smith, who appeared a year back on a television talent show and, though she lost, was signed by Universal Classics & Jazz (UCJ) - yes, them again - for a reputed £2.3 million ($3.1 million).

The comments of Dickon Stainer, UK head of UCJ and the man who signed the cheque, are worth quoting in extenso for future deconstruction. Stainer said: "She is our major international priority. She is an absolute once-in-a-generation talent. For her age there's probably never been anybody who can sing like she can. If she looks after her voice and is nurtured properly she will be successful all over the world. She can make classical music more accessible than any other artist since Pavarotti."

Right. So I guess we had better take her seriously. After all, the Times reports that 80,000 copies of her disc have been shipped, a higher volume than the new U2 album.

Today, the Sunday Times turns the advance hype into 'the fastest-selling solo classical album' and states that Faryl is 'expected' to break into the Top Ten. The record business used to pay for advertisements in Times Newspapers. Now they get promoted for free.

Faryl seems like a sweet young girl from Kettering, Northants. She admits that she neither listens to nor respects classical music. 'Classical singing is mainly aimed at older people,' she says. So why is she being published by Universal Classics & Jazz? And why is she is expected to make classical music more popular?

To crack these nuggets of wishful marketing, you need to hark back to recent events. UCJ last month demolished Decca label because its UK boss, Strainer, could not agree a policy with the international chief, Chris Roberts. A great classical heritage was sacrificed on the altar of their corporate feud.

UCJ is now shovelling its cash into crossover trash after Warner stole its headline act Katharine Jenkins and Sony outsold it with Il Divo. This is not a company that knows - or even remembers - what classical records are about. It is a pathetic, passive offshoot of couch-potato reality television.

Young Faryl herself is a familiar phenomenon. She was once called Charlotte Church. Then Paul Potts. She will go on to different things. Or not. Who cares?

The Observer, a British Sunday newspaper, set up one of those self-fullling propositions today by asking: Critic vs Blog - is the art of criticism under threat from the web?

The article that explores these tensions is, so far as I can judge, fair, balanced and, insofar as it quotes my views, pretty accurate and to the point.

What skews it are the photographs which show the critics to be bursting with middle-age, while the bloggers portrayed are uniformly young, hip and street-wise.

The pictures, I can reveal, were posed. The critics were specifically asked to dress up in suits, while the bloggers are seen in gear that is generically casual. The meaning conveyed is simple. Critics = old and square, bloggers = young and cool.

That 's the sort of thing that gives journalism a bad name, the more so when it is palpably untrue, as it is here. Many of the  bloggers I come across on-line are of pensionable age and crusty disposition. Many of the critics I meet in pursuit of my trade are young, unwaged and astonishingly open-eared and minded.

Nor are the two worlds mutually exclusive. Most arts bloggers get their juices flowing by what they read in newspapers, print or on-line. More and more professional critics are alert to what airs on-line and, from time to time, assimilate and respond to it.

There are no hard and fast borders. Some bloggers strive for an impartiality worthy of the New York Times at its dullest. Some critics make polemic their passion, the rage at bad art increasing with the passing of years. That makes essential reading.

Some - I am not alone in this - inhabit both sides of the tracks. We write in newspapers for a living and feed a blog like this one with material we either can't or don't want to put in print - stuff that, in our judgement, has its most appropriate place out here, sparking instant responses and cutting more quickly than a newspaper page can with its cumbersome furniture and - in the Observer article - occasionally distorted view of the world.

One of the first laws of journalism is never make the facts fit the story. In the Observer, the story looks as if it has been commissioned to fit a fake picture.