Blogocentric Formulations

It's a new soundtrack, I could dance to this beat

Back in September, a journalism job posted by Gannett Media went viral. The position they were advertising was for someone to report on the "Taylor Swift beat," meaning they're looking for someone whose only job is to report on Taylor Swift and what she's doing. Rumor has it there's a similar position for Beyonce in the works, BTW...

Normally, I would find this kind of thing amusing. My wife loves Taylor Swift (I like her music a lot as well, to be fair), and I joked that this would be the perfect job for her because she'd get paid to do what she's already doing, which is religiously watching TikTok, Instagram, etc. looking for the latest updates on where in the world Taylor Swift is at any particular moment, and what she's doing.

Surprisingly, though, Gannett actually did hire a Swiftie for this position. Bryan West (who does admittedly have decent journalistic credentials) was chosen for the job, and he's an admitted Swiftie. His audition video very much touted how much of a fan he is, and he says he follows a lot of Taylor news already, including "every outing, every new song, every lyric, every album release, every party." And while I will stipulate that I haven't read the Gannett job posting so I don't have any visibility into what Gannett is actually looking for (they may very well want a fan service column about Taylor Swift's day-to-day), from the perspective of journalistic integrity, this feels like kind of an icky choice.

I'm sure West is a lovely person but, to "prove his point" that he can report unbiased news on the singer, he listed three songs of hers that he can't stand. But then quickly says that he sees his job as, "To highlight her global and societal impact because she keeps breaking her own records." And that kind of clearly makes my point... the guy is biased in favor of the topic he's supposed to be writing about. Earlier this year, there was a story about how Taylor Swift's private jet use is off the charts (this was in connection with a story about climate change and how damaging it is to have the super-rich take frivolous private flights that generate massive emissions), and she pushed back saying that she often lends her jet to friends so it's not her taking all these random flights from Los Angeles to San Francisco, or across the country six times a week. And it feels like those stories maybe aren't going to get a lot of attention on West's "Taylor Swift beat" because he's so clearly a massive fan of hers, despite his admitting that he *gasp* doesn't like *gasp* three of the 100+ songs she's recorded over the course of her career.

Maybe I'm blowing this all out of proportion. Maybe Gannett wants West to write fan service. But if that's the case, they shouldn't be advertising the job like it's a serious journalistic position; they should just be open about the fact that it's supposed to be tabloid fodder or entertainment, rather than "reporting." It feels like the media has enough trouble with bias and negative perceptions without hiring a fanboy to report on the object of his obsession, and then calling it objective journalism.