Stereophile looses Jonathan Scull

Scull? You mean Mr. Italics? Mr. Large Butt? Ribbon Chair? The sad part is that through attrition, he had actually become one of the more interesting writers they had left, which I mean as a backhanded compliment. You might remember how lots of folks voiced their dismay when he was promoted to Senior Editor. If you ask me, it was Scull who needed an editor! Yet compared to a stodgy sountrack-maven like Greenhill, or a gee-whiz superlatives-monger like Reina, Scull, even with all his excesses, could at least sometimes bring a smile to my face. And I for one was puzzled to say the least when he caught so many accusations for his honestly negative review of the Richard Gray power conditioner, in light of the longstanding charge that the mag and its advertisers were in bed together to produce nothing but raves. He deserves credit for communicating his obvious love of music and audio, for trying to entertain, for employing diverse styles of music in his auditioning, and for never taking himself seriously - despite his predilections for big bucks and purple prose. (Dare I suppose he could still contribute reviews, even if he is not a member of the editorial staff? His predecessor, Wes Phillips, still writes for Stereophile occasionally.) But as one who never quite cottoned to J-10's "tweakage-'n'-leakage" school of reveiwing, I must say that promoting him then or loosing him now is the least of Sterelphile's problems. Recommended Components is a "Class A" bad joke gone stale. The best writing is in the columns and the occasional feature, not the Incredible Shrinking Review Section. Their most technically informative contributors, Dickson and Colloms, are MIA. The long-promised upgrade of the photographic content vanished almost before anyone could see it. Intriguing new products languish unreviewed. The whole thing feels like JA & Co. are just going through the motions, and grudgingly at that. If it wasn't for the borderline amaturishness and mayfly-like endurance often displayed by most of their print and online competition, not to mention the fact that no one else is doing tests since the demise of the late (and unlamented by me) Audio, Stereophile would be in real trouble. If TAS takes advantage of the situation the way they should, it will be (although if the copy-cat tendencies begun in the last issue are any indication, I wouldn't get my hopes up). But at a buck an issue, what can we expect? I think most readers would gladly pay double, if the advertising won't cut it, to get back the old gutbusting Stereophile 12 times a year.

Jadem6, although I can't quite yet agree with his call for JA's head, is quite right about the Dunlavy IV classification affair. I would extend his critique to the whole of "Recommended Components" in this way: Unequal treatment is the norm, and the very fact of it delegitimizes the entire "ranking" hierarchy. This problem, BTW, is independent of any possible conflict of interest or "revenge" motive for JA's actions in that particular case. It is illustrated in that instance by the simple fact that JA does not "double-check" with his own ears (and opinions) every component ranked primarily according to its original reviewer's conclusions, or even very many of them. The near-uniqueness of his revisionism in the Dunlavy case only serves to increase the appearance of possible impropriety raised by the circumstances that Jadem6 refers to above. Unequal treatment manifests itself as Standard Operating Procedure when it comes to the ranking of components that are reviewed sans any measurements at all, such as those written up by Sam Tellig. To put it flatly, it is patently unfair to demote or deny one component a recommendation classification earned on purely sonic grounds because of its measurements, when another is recommended just as or more highly based on the same grounds, but without any measurements being taken on it at all. By the same token, some products are "saved" from being dropped off the list through attrition by a reviewer's timely "Followup" (often at the Editor's direction), while many others are allowed to languish and disappear from the biannual listing without an update - clearly unfair. Again, an example of favorable treatment that should be available equally for all, or equally for none, but not unequally for some (and JA surely knows that the eternal disclaimer about a piece's being dropped from "Recommended Components" in this manner not meaning it is "de-recommended" cuts no ice in this regard). The evidence for the insidious phenomenom of "class inflation" has been cited by others (see Trelja above), and JA certainly bears the responsibility for its corrosive effects, not only on Stereophile's reputation, but on the way that products are marketed and sold in the high-end industry. These and other valid points of criticism are also raised by Mssrs. Soholm and Clark in the letters column of the current issue of the magazine. I believe that John Atkinson possesses the werewithal, discernment, and fundamental sense of ethics to correct the state his magazine has drifted into regarding all of the problems enumerated here and in the above posts (including my own previous one), but whether he has the will or the vision to do so is an open question.