Gannett, the most important newspaper chain within the United States, introduced on Tuesday that it might rent a reporter to hide considered one of largest names in tune: Taylor Swift.
As Swift’s prominence grows all through her record-breaking excursion, Gannett stated it used to be taking a look for a reporter who may seize the importance of her tune, in addition to her “growing legacy” and “the effect she has across the music and business worlds.”
The reporter could be writing for USA Today and The Tennessean, the writer’s newspaper in Nashville, the place Swift started her profession as a nation darling ahead of promoting out stadiums throughout North America on her record-breaking Eras Tour.
The task displays the frenzied fandom that has surrounded Swift, whose cultural resonance turns out to deepen with each and every album, together with the re-recordings of her previous tune. Her fanatics have spent hundreds of greenbacks on live performance tickets and shook the bottom so exhausting at one live performance that it registered as an earthquake on a seismometer close to Seattle.
Reactions to the task posting were combined, together with reward for Gannett for making an attempt to succeed in a new target market and grievance over how the corporate has laid off native newshounds lately.
Kristin Roberts, Gannett leader content material officer, stated in a commentary on Tuesday night time that america Today Network, which the corporate owns, is dedicated to serving its readers with very important journalism, and that “includes providing our audience with content they crave.”
“As Taylor Swift’s fan base has grown to unprecedented heights, so has the influence of her music and growing legacy — not only on the industry but on our culture,” Ms. Roberts stated. “She is shaping a generation and is relevant, influential and innovative — just like us.”
Newspapers frequently make use of tune critics and leisure journalists, however infrequently assign a reporter to hide a unmarried artist.
The acclaim for Swift, even though, has proved to be a robust pressure over the summer season, culturally and economically.
A Federal Reserve survey of commercial contacts reported that Swift fanatics, or Swifties, had reinforced hotel revenues within the Philadelphia area. Although Swift, 33, and her promoters don’t publicly document box-office figures, the industry e-newsletter Pollstar estimates that she has been promoting about $14 million in tickets each and every night time. By the tip of her deliberate global excursion, which is booked with 146 stadium dates smartly into 2024, Swift’s gross sales may achieve $1.4 billion or extra — exceeding Elton John’s $939 million for his multiyear farewell excursion, the present record-holder.
Some newshounds expressed fear about Gannett’s reporting priorities. Last December, Gannett minimize about 6 p.c of the corporate’s more or less 3,440-person U.S. media department. Media analysts stated the transfer may aggravate the state of the native news trade, which has contracted lately, developing information deserts in communities around the nation.
Laura D. Testino, a reporter for Chalkbeat Tennessee, stated on X, previously referred to as Twitter, that whilst Nashville is getting a Swift reporter, “Memphis is still without an investigative reporter.”
Gannett has employed 225 newshounds since March and now has greater than 100 open roles, Ms. Roberts stated.
Vrinda Jagota, a tune author who has reported on Swift’s cultural importance, stated in an interview on Tuesday that whilst Swift is a advanced pop icon worthy of journalistic research, there are different stars who’re simply as large, reminiscent of Beyoncé.
The Beyoncé album “Renaissance,” for instance, has resonated with many Black and L.G.B.T.Q. other people, she stated.
“I think the question that comes to mind for me is which fandoms and which moments of connection are taken more seriously,” Ms. Jagota stated. “And Taylor Swift’s fandom is very white. It’s a lot of white women.”
Robert Thompson, the director of the Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture at Syracuse University, stated on Tuesday that such a hiring “is not as absurd as it looks at first glance.”
In an more and more fragmented cultural surroundings, “where mass culture has broken up into a million little pieces,” he stated, there may be an larger worth to the only factor that emerges that necessarily everybody can touch upon.
“You cannot be conscious in the United States without on some level having to come to grips with Taylor Swift,” Dr. Thompson stated. Covering somebody like her, he added, is a “perfectly sound activity for a journalist to be doing.”