MTV's disappearing "albums that will suck" editorial

Last week, we posted a amusing editorial from MTV.com wherein an intrepid columnist proceeding to take on some of the media company's sacred cows. Writer James Montgomery decried upcoming albums from scene heroes like Panic! At the Disco, Weezer, Thrice and even 50 Cent. We here at Punknews.org had a premonition the column wouldn't last long, so we kept a copy for your perusal.

In any case, James returned this week with a bit of explanation as to what happened to the column seeing as it lasted less than 9 hours before being quietly removed from MTV.com. James described the situation:

Last week's BTTS was supposed to be a joke-y take on the idea of "anti-buzz," which states that it's not important whether people are saying good or bad things about an upcoming album/film/whatever, just that they're talking about it in the first place. The content of the talking isn't as important as the concept of it: Anti-buzz, it would seem, is better than no buzz at all (this could also be known as "The Paris Hilton Corollary").

Around 5 p.m., things took a turn for the worse when a representative for one of the artists I singled out was unhappy -- and made her feelings known to my higher-ups.

The column got taken down. I got a talking-to. Everyone agreed to move forward. As a news department, we don't make a practice of kowtowing to the demands of artists' representatives -- but we also don't make a practice of running borderline-unprofessional "columns," either. Yet both of those things seemingly happened in this instance.

But perhaps I'm not the only one who could be saying sorry. Without getting into it too much, there are some artists who could develop thicker skin, and some artists' representatives who could at least read an offending article before carpet-bombing our offices with outraged phone calls.

Again, a snapshot of the column can be found here.