Who Reads Maxim for the Reviews Anyways?
February 29, 2008
It has recently come out that the magazine Maxim has been writing album reviews without even listening to entire albums. This report came out when the band The Black Crowes wrote on their Web site that Maxim had written a review of their new album “Warpaint” before the band had made advanced copies available. The post states, “Incredulously, the magazine gave the album a two and a half star rating–although neither the writer nor the editor could have heard more than one song.” The Black Crowes manager then angrily ripped the magazine, questioning their journalistic integrity. The post also states that when Maxim was questioned about the review, they described it as “an educated guess preview.”
I think that Maxim has done an awful job of spinning this story in a way that would be beneficial to them. Instead of coming out and directly apologising to the band for what they did, they came out with a statement calling the review “an educated guess preview?”Once the news was made public, the magazine did come out with an apology, but not a very believable one. According to Yahoo News, “Maxim editorial director James Kaminsky responded Tuesday with this statement: ‘It is Maxim’s editorial policy to assign star ratings only to those albums that have been heard in their entirety. Unfortunately, that policy was not followed in the March 2008 issue of our magazine and we apologize to our readers.’” They didn’t even say sorry to the Black Crowes, and had no decision on whether or not the writer of the review will face disciplinary action. If I am doing Maxim’s PR, I immediately own up to this and assure people that it was a one-time only mistake made by the reviewer, and he/she will face harsh consequences. I think that this is going to really hurt their reputation, and it will take a long time to build their credibility back up. If this wasn’t enough, it recently came out that Maxim did the same thing for Naz’s new album, and just yesterday the L.A. Times music blog spoke with the writer of the review, David Peisner, who claimed “I was assigned to write previews of the Black Crowes and Nas albums. I did that. When the issue came out, the previews were laid out as reviews complete with star ratings. I never at any point or to anyone claimed to have heard these albums in their entirety. Whatever decisions Maxim made after I turned in my work were beyond my control.”
Maxim has not done a very good job keeping this under control, and I think that these recent allegation by Peisner will make it almost impossible for them to restore their credibility. If I were in charge over at Maxim, I would just stick to putting hot girls in my magazine. Besides, no one reads Maxim for their reviews anyways.
