Anyone who follows political news with any regularity knows that it’s next to impossible to go very long without hearing an accusation of media bias. But whether it’s coming from the right or the left, proving bias is complicated and time consuming due to the issues and (often-disputed) facts involved. More common by far is sloppy, lazy, uninformed journalism that goes unnoticed by the masses. There’s obviously no comprehensive media scoreboard keeping track of who gets it right and who should be out looking for a new line of work, but if mainstream reporting on the areas in which I claim expert status (advertising, electronic music, nightclubs/raves) is representative of reporting as a whole, there are far too many journalists covering subjects completely outside their understanding.
Recently as I was scrolling through my news feeds, I stumbled across a story in the San Francisco Chronicle that seemed completely out of place as it was a lifestyle piece that came across the main news feed. I would have chalked it up to a technical glitch or ignored it completely except for the headline: CLUB SCENE GROWS UP. With the subject matter so close to home, I flagged it for later reading and continued about my day until I passed a Chronicle news rack and saw that CLUB SCENE GROWS UP was not just on the front page, but the main headline at the top of the page. Intrigued by both the headline and its placement, I picked up a copy and chuckled a bit when I read the sub-head: The party isn’t over in S.F. — it has just moved on to smaller, mellower places. Nights of excess in huge venues give way to calmer gatherings in more intimate settings. In the coming era of personalized news, that sub-head would have read: Why Matt doesn’t pull down six figures anymore, but then again it would also have been written by someone with at least a passing understanding of the San Francisco club scene.
Over the last five years, San Francisco and the greater Bay Area have seen an enormous amount of change, more even than the areas directly affected by 9/11. The wealth effect produced by the tech bubble coursed through the whole economy, especially the entertainment industry and specifically nightclubs. Dot-com workers flush with salaries and stock portfolios run up by frenzied bidding wars spent their nights in sweaty beat temples like 1015 Folsom, 550 Barneveld, and 177 Townsend, worshipping at the feet of DJs foreign and domestic. Inflated salaries led to inflated cover charges, inflated DJ fees to inflated cocktails, but while it lasted it was one of the peak eras of international club culture. Reading Carolyne Zinko‘s article in the Chronicle, a reader not familiar with the facts would fairly conclude that clubgoers just got sick of it all and lost interest in hearing cutting edge sounds from the best DJs in the world.
In fact, Zinko seems to have gone to great lengths to interview people with just that point of view. Witness the quotes that made it into the article:
“I was just at a large club last Saturday, and it was a mosh scene,” she said. “I got pushed around and spilled on. … It’s no fun for us adults. “I wouldn’t go to Ruby Skye if you paid me.” “A big club is a box you dance in and go home.” “[I]t’s not like the mega clubs where the atmosphere is like a big meat market.” “I don’t want to come home with music ringing in my ears, tired of fighting the scene. You can’t have fun with your friends because you’re distracted by lights, the music volume and people bumping you all the time.”
The “over it” point of view may be in fashion, but it hardly explains what has happened to the San Francisco club scene in the last few years; in fact none of those quotes would have been surprising to hear at the very peak of of the big club era. Zinko makes sure to reference the aging of “Generation X” as a factor in the rise of smaller clubs, yet makes no effort to explain the clubgoing habits of “Generation Y,” nor the Xers who still go out to big clubs. Ruby Skye is far from empty, no matter how many people say they couldn’t be paid to attend. Is exclusively interviewing people in their mid-30s the best way to cover an alleged slip in attendance in afterhours clubs? If so, maybe the Chronicle can investigate the dip in prune juice sales by talking to teenagers, and round up a bunch of octogenarians when they want to write about the newest fashion craze. In the interest of giving the whole story to her readers, shouldn’t Zinko have gone to a big afterhours club and written about the 20-somethings dancing past 2AM? Or is that past her bedtime?
The scant attention paid to the main cause of slipping big-club attendance, financial concerns, is factually inaccurate:
In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was not unusual for clubs to have cover charges of $35, $40 or even $50 — necessary to fly in DJs from London, Amsterdam or even Ibiza and pay them the going rate of $35,000 for a night’s work.
In fact it was exceedingly unusual to see cover charges over $20, and DJ fees over $10,000. Prices higher than that were reserved for special occasions, and then only New Year’s Eve saw anything approaching those covers and DJ pay. It’s fair to say that professional clubbers grew tired of paying in cover charges what they would rather be drinking, but throwing out maximal numbers and calling them “not unusual” is irresponsible, and further doesn’t explain the steady stream of superstar DJs still appearing in San Francisco, nor how many patrons of smaller clubs still regularly go to see said DJs.
That San Francisco has seen the rise of smaller boutique bars is not in doubt, and if “Club Scene Grows Up” had been a Style Page story reviewing the best new clubs, it would have been of some value to Chronicle readers. But its placement within the news section, at the top of the front page, combined with homogenous interview subjects and incorrect facts and assumptions render it not worthy of a high school paper. Hopefully Zinko is just clueless rather than having a conflict of interest or a grudge against big clubs, but in any event, she and her editors got this one wrong, and produced yet another example of lazy journalism that didn’t have to be.
And when stories about something as simple and innocuous as the nightclub scene can be mangled this badly, it begs the question: “What’s happening on big, important, complicated issues?”