Not Surprising At All, Really

By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 20, 2010 3:40PM

In a climate where talented music critics are scrabbling over freelance gigs it was mighty surprising to hear Jim DeRogatis announce yesterday he was leaving his high profile gig at the Sun-Times to teach at Columbia, though he would continue to write about music regularly for the NPR connected Vocalo blog. The news was even more surprising as DeRogatis' star seemed to be rising ever further as one of the last remaining true critical voices grounded in non-ironic sensibility and a pursuit for clarity and honesty. Trust me, I've been writing about music for 20 years and to see someone like DeRogatis continue to unerringly align himself with honest opinion, whether you (or publicists, or bands) like it or not is a really rare thing.

So then this news, in light of that, maybe isn't so surprising. The pulpit of one of the last few truly great newspapers is a valuable one, but it's also a pulpit crumbling from the decay of the print media in general. DeRogatis official reason for his departure was released in a prepared statement yesterday:

After 15 years at Chicago’s best daily newspaper, I am thrilled to have been offered the opportunity and the challenge to help the students at Columbia College shape the journalism and cultural criticism of the future,” DeRogatis said. “At the same time, I’m every bit as pumped up to continue covering the pop-music beat—with a special emphasis on the incredibly vibrant Chicago music scene—under the auspices of the exciting new-media community of vocalo.org, and with even more synergy with ‘Sound Opinions,’ which Greg Kot and I have been producing at Chicago Public Radio since 2005.

So it seems DeRogatis is abandoning the past to try and help build the future. While everyone else is wailing about and railing against the state of media today, DeRogatis appears to be holding true to his principles and is, instead of resting on his laurels and collecting an easy paycheck, diving back into the fray in order to try and help map out where the future of music criticism may lie.

So yeah, we guess yesterday's news was a bit of a shock, but once you stop to think about it, it wasn't really all that surprising.