"My fear is that music journalists will be asked to participate more and more in the show-biz side of things, to play up the splash and dazzle of grandiose happenings, to offer reviews that are not so much commentaries as consumer reports on star performers, to turn their longer writings into black-and-white versions of ''Entertainment Tonight'' featurettes. But my hope is that coverage of that sort will be left to the media for which it is appropriate, that publishers will capitalize on the fact that newspapers - simply because they are durable - can traffic not just in images but in ideas."
Where is music criticism headed?
(James Wierzbicki prognosticates at Julliard, 1990)