According to John Koblin of
The New York Observer, the main candidates for the now-vacant pop critic job at the
New York Times are Jon Caramanica (who is departing his post as
Vibe's music editor this week) and Jody Rosen of
Slate (and, frequently,
Blender), though there are others allegedly in the offing: Sam Sifton, the paper's culture editor, says he's "looking at a lot of candidates." Still, Sanneh's departure to
The New Yorker (he'll be a culture writer there, not the pop critic—that's still Sasha Frere-Jones' job) hasn't made him lose any perspective, as he tells Koblin, "It's also a job that's impossible to complain about, partly because it's the opposite of boring, and partly because no sympathy will ever be offered to someone who goes to concerts for a living." [
NY Observer]
Idolator
Sure, we've all had a laugh when the ever-staid The New York Times has made second references to "Mr. Pop" and "Mr. Loaf" in its cultural reporting. But why, the Columbia Journalism Review wonders, are the stage names of hip-hop artists like Jay-Z, 50 Cent, and Diddy not given the same treatment? Instead, they frequently get their birth names swapped into stories right away—even though artists in other genres who hide behind aliases, from Alicia Keys (nee Alicia Augello-Cook) to Clay Aiken (nee Clayton Grissom), don't get the same treatment. Is it because no one in the copy department wants to put a definitive entry in the stylebook on how to properly punctuate "Mr. Z," or is there something more nefarious at work? CJR demands answers!
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Former New York Times music-biz reporter Jeff Leeds resurfaces on Sasha Frere Jones' blog at The New Yorker, and the two discuss a few topics, including the current state of the art/commerce divide. This quote from Leeds, in particular, 
