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Editor
Needs Journalism Lesson
To
the Editors:
Regarding
Jessica Rosenberg’s questionable review of the Voices on the
Verge show at the Cat:
I helped publicize and hosted the show, so I am, of course, biased.
But there are just a few too many glaring omissions, factual discrepancies,
and journalistic inadequacies in your review that I had to write
to you. So bias or not, here I come.
Last Wednesday, Oberlin was treated to a free concert of a New England
based traveling musician’s collective. Called Voices on the
Verge, the group is made up of alt. folkie Rose Polenzani, beat
poet/jazzwoman/bluesman Erin McKeown, classically sonorous folksinger
Beth Amsel, and a-cross-between-dolly-parton-&-aretha-franklin
Jess Klein. None of these Voices are really “on the verge.”
They’re fully launched and already across the great divide
that separates the open-mic-hoepfuls from the Next Big Thing, a
fact that is rather obscured by Rosenberg’s review.
To begin with, Rosenberg simply got it all wrong. Maybe she just
didn’t really even get it. Rose Polenzani was actually quite
the rocking firecracker, wailing and moaning into the night, a far
cry from the “earnest vulnerable” ingenue the review painted
her to be. Jess Klein (labeled “spacey” by Rosenberg)
offered up shrewd lyrics jostling around in twanging country-rock.
Beth Amsel, whose palpable gentleness earned her a dismissal as
a “self-esteem seeker,” possessed a poetic sensibility
and vibrato as lovely as any you’ll ever hear soaring to the
Cat’s ceiling. And while “pretentious rockstar” Erin
McKeown gave as snazzy a blues-jazz-tin pan alley performance as
ever, she’d be the first one to tell you she wasn’t the
star of the night. Again, for those who missed it (ahem, Jessica),
they’re called Voices on the Verge, not Erin Mckeown and Her
Fancy Voices on the Verge Music Machine.
But Rosenberg neglected to arrange even the most cursory 10-minute
pre-show interview with any of the Voices or those of us who put
the show together; barring that, she also apparently skipped out
of the Cat right at the curtain, when, if she’d only stuck
around till the crowd left, she could’ve spoken with any of
us — musicians, tour manager, booker, publicist — and
actually gotten her facts straight. Like, for instance, McKeown’s
age (she’s actually 24). Or Klein’s lyrics (um, she doesn’t
have a song about love in the trees). Or, say, the current state
of Amsel’s esteem (quite fine, thank you).
Erin, Rose, Jess, and Beth may be young, but they’ve got plenty
of years of songwriting under their belts and have been nominated
for enough awards to prove it. It’s really unfortunate and
kind of boggling, then, that Rosenberg chose to capitalize upon
only those songs featuring purposefully and deceptively simple lyrics
and then level attacks on the women’s lyrical abilities. Judging
by this and past reviews Rosenberg has penned, I’m going to
assume no one’s ever informed her of this, so I’ll go
out on a limb and be the messenger here: Jessica, resorting to sophomoric
slurs (“puerile lyric purgatory,” I believe, was the fifty-cent
phrase you so proudly cranked out) is not good — or even acceptable
— journalism by any stretch of the printing press.
Kudos, however, to Cat Richert, for her roundtable interview with
the Voices. Cat’s piece was on-the-mark, owing to the fact
that she, unlike Ms. Rosenberg, actually spent 15 paltry minutes
to browse their websites, check out the show’s publicity, and
get her facts together before sitting down to put her thoughts in
print. (And on top of that, she actually knows how to write. Now
how often does that happen in the Review?)
So Jessica, here’s some unsolicited advice from this writer.
To paraphrase your review’s final words: Journalism is a long,
long road, and you’ve just gotten started. Let’s just
hope you encounter many readers willing to wait until you get it
together. In the meantime, try following Cat’s lead. And take
notes. Copious ones.
–Jill
Certo
OC ’00
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