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For the better part of 15 years, my colleague Spencer Kornhaber has been working in and around music-and-film coverage at The Atlantic, performing a service that was once, if not exactly universal, at least fairly common at newspapers and alt-weeklies across the country. Now, amid the broad crisis in the journalism industry, it’s a rarity—and social-media personalities are trying to fill the gaps.

I started my career writing for music publications—Spin, Billboard, Pitchfork, and others—in part because I grew up reading them. I was never under the illusion that I’d become the next Lester Bangs,

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