Introduction

“Liquid journalism” is a term coined by Professor Mark Deuze, adapted from the concept of “liquid modernity” by Polish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman (2000). Deuze used the term in the mid-2000s to describe the “process of radical modernisation of modern society” (Deuze, 2007) in relation to the influence of Web 2.0 on journalism following the turn of the millennium. This concept of radical change can be reapplied to post-COVID journalism, where the output of the modern authoritative professional journalist becomes susceptible to the influence of the factors underlined by Deuze due to the cost-of-living crisis and increasing societal dependency on technology over physical print media. Drawing on case studies involving Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and interviewer Bobbi Althoff, this essay argues that the output of the modern authoritative music journalist is shaped primarily by the economic pressures of the commercial digital model, increased audience participation enabled by Web 2.0 democratisation, and the rise of personality-driven, liquid social-media journalism.

Economic Pressures and the Commercial Digital Model

The economic dimension of liquid journalism is especially clear in the music press. A key shift is documented in a study by Steve Jones and Thomas Conner for the IASPM Journal, as it was concluded that “criticism has shifted focus from matters of music to matters of business.” They theorised that this was due to the “industrial nature of popular music production, distribution and consumption” due to “the [increased] widespread use of the Internet for file sharing” (2014). This conclusion was drawn from the analysis of over 22,000 magazines archived on “rocksbackpages.com”, which contain more than five decades of popular music criticism from sources such as NME, Rolling Stone, Spin, and Uncut. The sample magazines were then scanned and quantified using keywords typically associated with music business, such as “chart”, “box office”, “gold record”, and “units”. This shift reflects the broader transition from physical to digital distribution in both music and journalism, resulting in the authoritative journalist’s career uncertainty described as part of Deuze’s theory of liquid journalism.

Whilst this analysis took place in the decade before COVID, it establishes the commercial transition exacerbated by COVID that led to an “increased engagement by journalists with the music industry and with its particular issues of production, distribution and consumption” (Jacke, James and Montano, 2014) as opposed to grassroots, print-based music discovery and reporting. This trend can be seen specifically in the reporting of legacy magazines such as Rolling Stone Magazine, utilising quantised “Best of” lists to generate online discourse and controversy to garner clicks. The cultural function of such lists has changed; rather than serving as authoritative editorial statements, they now operate as catalysts for virality. “Top ___” lists drum up endless reactionary YouTube titles such as “Rolling Stone’s Top 250 Songs List is a JOKE” (Donovan, 2025), “Rolling Stones’ Idiotic Top 250 Guitar Players List” (Beato, 2023), and “The Most Disappointing List of All Time” (Fantano, 2024). Beato and Fantano’s participation in the discourse surrounding the lists of Rolling Stone Magazine illustrates the online virality and engagement the lists receive as faces of modern internet music culture. Nikunen (2014) describes this pursuit of discourse as a form of revenue as a symptom of “growing technological and economic imperatives increasingly influencing and challenging journalistic autonomy and also professional identity” – highlighting the lack of financial security print once provided for legacy media. This lack of autonomous certainty due to a lack of consistent funding, once found through the print subscription model, leads journalists and publications to become reliant on garnering readers through the digital model. The digital model, functioning on insecure “per click” advertisement revenue combined with short and irregular contracting, creates a sense of career uncertainty for the modern authoritative journalist, as they can no longer rely on the steady flow of subscriptions found in the models of the 20th century.

These sets of lists fall under Deuze’s predictions that “value attributed to media content will be increasingly determined by the interactions between users and producers rather than the product itself” (2006). As the list itself provides little cultural significance and value in isolation (or perhaps not with the same authoritative status it may have held half a century ago), they become a means to forge the discussions other readers will have amongst themselves that circle back to clicking upon Rolling Stone’s website and generating them monetary revenue. Due to the nature of Web 2.0 with its instantaneous and infinite flow of feedback, the list serves not as a standalone piece as it would have been in 20th-century print media, but as a (perhaps heated) dialogue between producer and user as to what is the “best” and “worst”. Bauman describes the modern liquid arts journalist as “not a teacher as in the high modern ethos but a storekeeper, trying to arouse customer interest in the products put on display” (Bauman, 2011). This reliance on that dialogue for revenue influences and compromises the journalistic intent of the list, and as a result, the audience receives a more diluted review: one that is fit to either enrage or satisfy the outlet’s desired audience rather than reflect the tastes of an authoritative music journalist with full autonomy over their work.

Audience Participation and Web 2.0 Democratisation

Due to the rise of social media-based journalism and the acceleration of late-stage capitalism, a shift in cultural mindset has taken place in which participants are simultaneously both producers and consumers of culture. Legacy media shares the same virtual stage as those who were once exclusively consumers of print media’s one-way conversation. This expansion on the “publishing to participation” (Flew, 2008) ethos of Web 2.0’s journalism comes in the form of the increased cultural prevalence of social media-influenced art criticism sites such as “Goodreads”, “RateYourMusic.com”, and most notably “Letterboxd”. Tweet-esque one-liner reviews from users are equally positioned beside the reviews of legacy media critics due to the sites’ “like-based” hierarchy interface (Runquist, 2023). Deuze describes this cultural criticism from everyday people as “citizen journalism”, where “people empowered by increasingly cheaper and easier-to-use technologies participate actively in their own ‘newsmaking’” (2006). This individualistic idea that ‘everyone can be and is a critic’ leads to a decreasing sense of authority for the role of the legacy journalist, as their platform as a gatekeeper of culture is devalued by algorithms, AI, and the instantaneous nature of streaming.

This shift in the role of authority for the modern professional music journalist is best exemplified by Pitchfork’s change of model after 30 years to include users’ own scores, which “will be shown next to your comment and will be aggregated with other readers to form a ‘reader score’ alongside Pitchfork’s official score” (Pitchfork, 2025). In “Liquid Modern Journalism with a Difference”, Maarit Jaakkola, Heikki Hellman, Kari Koljonen and Jari Väliverronen claim that “within the structures of modern liquid journalism, more lay people are interviewed instead of experts, the boundary between high and low is transgressed, and highbrow and lowbrow forms of culture are allowed to live side by side.” If the newly introduced comment sections of Pitchfork reviews are to follow suit as to that of ‘Letterboxd’, this blur of the traditional “producer” and “consumer” roles that once empowered the role of the modern authoritative journalist will continue to push and change current journalism. Pitchfork, once a powerful, independent cultural force in music criticism within the 2000s, now compromises in which Deuze describes as a balance “between its historical operationally closed working culture strictly relying on ‘experts’ and a more collaborative, responsive and interactive open journalistic culture” (2006) with its audience. This increasing lack of independence seen in Pitchfork’s authority can be traced back to their mass layoff and merging with men’s fashion magazine ‘GQ’, “categorically condemned” by the unions representing Pitchfork staff (Wright, 2024). Where Rolling Stones compromise the content of their lists to maintain semi-autonomy and prevalence in the public eye, Pitchfork forfeit their independence as a strong, singular voice in music criticism with the distinct boundary set between critic and audience as it platform readers’ participation.

Personality-driven cultural commentary via social media

In Bertaglia and Iamnitchi’s 2024 paper “The Monetisation of Toxicity: Analysing YouTube Content Creators and Controversy-Driven Engagement”, it was concluded that on social media platforms like YouTube, “toxicity is linked to higher levels of viewer interaction – most notably, an increase in comment volume” (Bertaglia, Iamnitchi, 2024). This conclusion aligns with the ideas of liquid journalism celebrating tabloid, controversial “infotainment” over substantive and impersonal “solid journalism” (Jaakkola et al., 2015). Whilst 21st-century convergence culture requires the legacy media journalist to utilise short-form content platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, it equally allows those without previous journalistic experience to become journalists through said platforms. Despite providing a sense of democracy for those desiring to enter the journalistic field, it equally provides a platform for works with little regard for journalistic training and the ethical standards set by the National Union of Journalists or IPSO. Bertaglia and Iamnitchi’s paper proves that this “clippable” sensationalist form of journalism benefits the social media model more than realist journalism typical of legacy media, due to the higher levels of engagement such controversy results in.

This prioritisation of style over substance can be seen in the works of interviewers such as Bobbi Althoff, a 28-year-old “momfluencer” turned social media star, hosting high-profile interviews with artists such as “Lil Yachty”, “Offset”, “Charlie Puth” and most notoriously “Drake”. With no previous journalistic qualifications, Bobbi hosts hour-long tabloid interviews conducted in an “offbeat, awkward and disarming” manner (Peach, 2025). Althoff uses this character as a Trojan horse to either extract information from her subjects or generate “viral” moments, often at the expense of journalistic professionalism, in the pursuit of short-form, ‘clippable’ moments that can be later shared on social media for revenue. The act of ‘clipping’ is harmful to journalism in itself as a process of stripping a piece of media of its original context and recontextualising it for a new audience: disregarding original authorial intent and nuance. A journalistic enterprise that entirely rests on the minimal regulations and reward systems of social media results in questions that prioritise parasocial intimacy over informative value, (“am I your type?” and “can you send [my daughter] some money?” (Althoff, 2023)) which conflict with NUJ Clause 6 on privacy, as a journalist should “do nothing to intrude into anybody’s private life” (National Union of Journalists, 2011). She also repeatedly insists upon her lack of prior research on interviewees, boasting she knows little to no songs by the subjects, exhibited in the Drake interview as well as her interview with Megan Trainor (Althoff, 2024). This exhibition of disregard towards the fundamental IPSO clauses surrounding the need for “accuracy” in reporting (IPSO, 2025) is harmful to modern journalism and defines the lack of reporting standards amongst sites like TikTok and Instagram. 

Dr Crystal Abidin states that “being able to skilfully build a continuum of self-disclosure along which one can manipulate and manoeuvre between layers of authenticity and truth-ness can be a highly viable endeavour” (Abidin, 2018) for influencers such as Althoff, who rely on switching between relatability and detached post-irony for their journalistic character. Critics of Althoff’s characterised interview style claim that “Althoff’s failure isn’t that she’s rude or disinterested, but that she’s incapable of challenging her audience beyond that”, with the intention of her characterised satire made unclear to the audience what she is satirising (Abad-Santos, 2023). In the age of post-internet journalism, social media audiences are expected to be readily equipped with the media literacy to “navigate complex and interactive social and technological networks” (Deuze, 2006) by infotainers such as Althoff, who blur the lines between irony, unprofessionalism, and characterisation to generate viral clips for her social media platforms. Althoff’s virality provides evidence for the fostering of tabloid and sensationalist journalism on social media, as her YouTube account has over 1.5 million subscribers. As convergence culture forces modern journalists onto social platforms, such platforms’ algorithms influence the manner and matter of their works, evidently rewarding and prioritising content of a tabloid, sensationalist nature.

Across Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, and social media personalities like Bobbi Althoff, the pressures of modern liquid journalism have a negative influence on the output of the modern authoritative professional music journalist. Rolling Stone Magazine illustrates how the commercial imperatives of the digital model incentivise list-based, controversy-driven content that prioritises “clicks” over autonomous art criticism. Pitchfork illustrates the legacy media’s attempt to adapt to the omnivorous nature of the modern music audience, as the erosion of hierarchy and boundaries between audience and expert leads to the decay of legacy media’s critical authority and autonomy. Meanwhile, the rise of internet personalities such as Bobbi Althoff evidences the unethical and unsustainable nature of the social media journalist, where personality-led infotainment is favoured by algorithm-led audiences over preparation and professionalism. Each study highlights how current post-COVID liquid journalism is shaped by the internet, which heightens the profit incentive and audience engagement. The result is a profession whose outputs are influenced less by editorial authority or cultural expertise, and more by late-stage capitalism’s over-saturation of commercialisation, consumer prioritisation, and personality-driven visibility that defines contemporary music journalism.

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