Following on from last week’s Stockholm Syndrome post about newspaper critics who simply soft soap jazz as if they are publicists themselves, doing jazz fans who crave a more objective perspective few favours, US jazz photographer and former Jazz Times news editor Patrick Hinely says “harsher criticism” has its place – but is wary of gratuitous negativity  

“Having written about jazz for more than 40 years now I have made a couple of rules for myself. First is to always be accurate. Accuracy was always paramount in the journalism programme at the university where I studied. It was well after school, while serving as news editor for Jazz Times, that I first encountered press releases which I knew were specious, filled with self-serving historical revisionism of the most putrid variety, which, if published, would enter falsehoods into the proverbial ‘permanent record’ and become the sources cited by future generations, and thus could taint forever the history of the music. We know better than to do that, though we must sometimes, perhaps especially in the course of enjoying those perks of our profession, remind ourselves that we do.

“Second is to always be constructive. I have been fortunate in being able, over time, to steer my chosen assignments away from subjects I don’t want to write about, for I have come to believe, in many ways, in what I would call a logical extension of that old saw often attributed to one’s mother: if you can’t say something nice, don't say anything at all. Take for example an assignment limited in length, such as reviewing an entire festival with upwards of 25 acts. Artists whose presentations never carried me past indifference, or ones I did not, for whatever reason, care for, I simply do not mention, except to refer the reader to a full listing of all artists on the collective bill, using what space I do have to more fully celebrate those artists I find worthy. 

“In that, I do my best to keep to answering those essential three questions I learned from an esteemed elder colleague, Art Lange, who attributed them to Goethe: What is the artist trying to do? How well does the artist do it? Is it worth doing? As far as I can tell, that is our charge, and the rest is window dressing.

“There is a place for harsher criticism, specifically, denouncing the emperor's new clothes when that is all there is on offer. That needs to be done, but unless the offending material raises my own personal hackles sufficiently, someone else can do it, it need not be me. I simply prefer to write about things I like, and I have finally, blessedly, gotten past any feelings of having anything to prove. I think it is essential for all writers to reach that point, but I would caution against doing so by gratuitously savaging an artist for the sake of making one’s screed more incendiary. Mere attention is not respect.

“It is a sad fact that newspapers and other mass-market written media which predate the digital age have, for the most part, ceased to evolve and have, rather, begun to devolve. There will be fewer people reading, and fewer column inches for them to read.”