Fremer's response to Salvatore illustrates how backward (reactionary) Fremer is when it comes to exploiting his own social position. His readiness to form judgements and protect his own interests is, as in all people concerned with status, far prompter toward those beneath them (and one of the purposes of his response is to situate Salvatore below him) than toward those higher up. It must be a good deal writing for Stereophile (a better deal than Salvatore has in writing his web page or any of us have writing our posts at audiogon and our gratis reviews at other audio sites). What strikes me is that Fremer for the most part is unable to give an account of the social function of his writing. This is paralleled by the fact that Stereophile contributors in general are not able to publicly reflect to any significant effect on their function in their dealings with manufacturers (except for the manufacturer's reply column). There are undoubtedly somewhere in the world reviewers who take a naive view of their own activities and who genuinely believe that their only moral task is to distinguish between good components and bad (some of the names of these reviewers were already mentioned in this thread), and those that believe that their only commercial task is to distinguish components that will sell from those that will not. In general, however, it is probably the business people at Stereophile that have a clearer idea of the circles to whom Stereophile is selling than the individual Stereophile contributor has of the audience for whom they write. Fremer, or any other Stereophile contributor is really in no position to control all of Stereophile. And who else should do it? Not the reading public; the activities of Stereophile fall outside all of our fields of vision (we may be interested in some of the same components as them, but we work outside Stereophile). This leaves the audio retailers and manufacturers as a court of appeal. But it is almost superfluous to mention how problematic, irresponsible and secret retailer and manufacturer control of the audio press must be.
If one wanted to fully critique the audio press, one would need a statistical survey of the capital at work in the audio publishing world. What is the source of these capital sums? Specifically, how much capital has migrated into a publisher from a given manufacturer in advertising fees and "corporate hospitality" (dinners, gifts, free reviewer samples, etc.)? On the other hand, what does an audio publication supply to the audio market for this manufacturer? It would be a short step from there to combine these questions and investigate whether, when capital flows into a publisher, it is directed at specific customer strata and trends that correspond to, say, SACD as opposed to DVD, or certain manufacturers as opposed to other ones, etc. It would be interesting also to see the sales figures in different markets for the main products advertised by or positively reviewed by a publisher. Of greatest interest would be information about the rating of a component and the advertising charges for it in the same magazine (Salvatore has repeatedly pointed to collusion on this level); likewise a picture of the relation between commercial success (sales figures) and literary succcess (critical reception in the press).
Of course, there are valuable components that fail to sell, and that a good publisher well nevertheless wish to sell not only as a matter of honor. But of course a common--and cynical--view of publishing is to see it as selling worthless components that succeed in selling only with its help. Another way to see audio publishing is as a combined operation, consisting of organized patronage and a lottery, in which every new component is a number and the reading public acts as banker. From the player's (in other words, the publisher's) winnings, a part is to be used to bet on numbers (components) that look splendid and significant but that scarcely figure into the gambling of the reading public. How much the player (the publisher) can bet on these numbers of course depends on their winnings on other more successful numbers (components). Of course, a publisher has to have a close relationship with specific writers--it does not need to follow a particular line--in order to maintain contact with a reading public. Obvious though it is, it is striking that in America, which possesses a number of clearly defined audio publications--Stereophile, the Absolute Sound, Ultimate Audio, etc.--very few attempts have been made (excepting Salvatore's and a few others) to undertake a systematic critique of these institutions. Yet this would be the only way to measure the abyss that separates big publications from smaller underground publications and those internet webzines that appear and disappear by the dozen every year, only to be replaced by similar smaller publications that open up in their wake. A systematic critique would also be a way to measure the gap that divides some of these big magazines from their disillusioned readers. It may lend additional weight to this already lengthy, abstract and unoriginal reflection if audio publishers came to see that the leaders among them will benefit more in terms of honor and profit from a sound criticism of their activities than from a socially reactionary response to one of their reviewer's (here: Fremer's response to Salvatore). Only experiece will enable us to discover the benefits of such a critique.
