Finding Pathways into Music Journalism, Starting an Independent Publication, & Creating Third Spaces
A Conversation with Hearing Things Co-founder Ryan Dombal
In late November of last year, I had the opportunity to interview Ryan Dombal of Hearing Things, a new worker-owned, independent music journalism publication. Previously, he was the Features editor at Pitchfork for fifteen years, reviewing some of the most influential albums and artists working right now, and profiling artists like Sufjan Stevens, The 1975, Erykah Badu, Charli XCX, and Ethel Cain. In the fall of 2024, Dombal and four of his former Pitchfork colleagues – Jill Mapes, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Dylan Green, and Andy Cush – founded Hearing Things. In our hour-long conversation, Dombal and I discussed how Hearing Things came about, formative experiences that introduced him to music journalism as a career, his advice for young people interested in pursuing music journalism, Hearing Things’ potential to provide third spaces for music fans, and why Charli XCX’s Brat maybe should have been a Pitchfork ‘10.’
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Tell me about how you started off in music journalism. Was there a specific moment where you knew that this was what you wanted to pursue?
The moment that I always think about is when I took a journalism elective class in high school. I grew up on Long Island and the guy who taught it was my favorite teacher. He was kind of the cool English teacher in high school, and [in this journalism class] we learned about reporting and, you know, all the 101. It was an elective, and one of the assignments was to review an album, movie, or book. So I remember [that] I wrote one for an REM album that was coming out at that time called Up. And I might still have that somewhere. I haven't looked at it in probably 20-plus years. I was the kind of person who would [go to] Tower Records and Barnes and Noble, these “third spaces,” where people could congregate and just loiter. And that's what I did as a teenager. At a place like Barnes and Noble, they had all the magazines there and you could sit down and read them. And you could take it to the cafe, get a cookie, and read a whole issue of Spin or something. And so I did that. Writing that review [for the journalism class], I was like, “oh, this is the same thing that they do in these magazines.” And my teacher was very supportive. I really liked that journalism class. I think I took it around the same time that I was deciding where to go to college.
I applied to a couple of journalism schools, including [Northwestern’s] Medill School of Journalism. I applied there and got in, and I was like, “okay, I guess this is what I'm doing now.” So I did have interest in [pursuing journalism], but it was also partially just this teacher and applying to [Medill] and getting in. Like, I applied to other places, and if those levers were switched or I got into another college and didn't get into Northwestern, I don't know, I could be doing something totally different now. When I was at Northwestern, I worked for the school paper and had a little music column. I did this calendar feature that was in the back of the weekly magazine that was just making fun of events that were happening in Chicago that week. I don't really understand why that existed, but it seemed like a fun thing for me. And at college, I just kept writing about music. I was always a really big music fan, and I played music with friends in high school and college. But I guess that reading more about music criticism and being in college led me to believe that this was a real career path. That might've been negligent on their part, but I kind of kept going, read a lot of older music criticism, and kept up with what was happening at that time. And that was the beginning.
A fun, full-circle thing is that I kept in touch with that same high school English teacher a little bit throughout the years. And he'd heard about when the layoffs at Pitchfork happened at the beginning of this year. And he texted me and was like, “sorry,” “let me know what you're doing next.” So, when Hearing Things happened, I texted him back and said, “we're doing this, we’re starting this!” And he was very nice about it and subscribed. It was a very heartwarming moment.
I wanted to ask you about Pitchfork, since that might be how a lot of people got into your writing and the writing of the other Hearing Things co-founders. Do you have any highlights of your time at Pitchfork or any features that you really loved writing? I especially love your Sufjan Stevens feature.
The Sufjan one was really big for me, because, historically, he hasn’t done a lot of interviews. And I'd been a really big fan of his since The Age of Adz, and not a lot of people say that. I liked Illinoise and all those other ones, but that one really connected with me. And then I kind of went back and gained a new appreciation for the previous stuff. I think I did a shorter interview with him on the phone before that. But with the Carrie and Lowell interview, it all just really worked out because I was just trying to interview him, period. I feel like there's a world where, 30 or 40 years from now, [Carrie and Lowell is] the album that he's known for. Carrie and Lowell is such a timeless piece. It’s personal in a way that felt new for his work because he's very narrative-driven, and obviously it's always personal, but a lot of times there's characters [narrating Stevens’ older songs]. With Carrie and Lowell, there wasn't that distance; it was just clearly like, “this is me.”
And if someone is singing about something that's from their life… that's a license [as a journalist] to ask about it because it's directly in the album. Anyone could deduce this. So that made me a little bit bolder, to ask some of those more personal questions. And I think that [with Stevens] understanding that it was in the album, he was very forthright in answering them. That meant a lot.
Do you have any other moments from working at Pitchfork that were very significant to you?
It's an obvious one, but reviewing the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy record. That was the first ‘10’ that they'd given in a long time when it came out in 2010. That was a big deal internally, just discussing it, writing the review, and having it edited. The ‘10’ was the sort of thing that I was definitely pushing for then, but at that point, I was just a writer. So it was really up to my editors. [That era of Pitchfork] just felt really fun. I remember that was also kind of the beginning of Twitter and social media really exploding. And it was a far cry from this ugly place that it is now. It was genuinely pretty fun. And, so, this Internet site, with a lot of nerdy people who are also on Twitter reading it… it was a little bit of a moment online. And it was fun to be a part of that.
I noticed that Hearing Things doesn't have album scores, like Pitchfork does. Was that intentional?
It was. I think we were just burned out on [album scores] a little bit, and on the idea of ranking music in that way. It can be useful for organizational purposes – for something like Pitchfork that has such a large footprint, and, at its peak, had a fair amount of cultural importance, [giving an album a score] means something, right? But for Hearing Things, as much as we have all this experience and are confident in our abilities as critics, it's small now, and we don't have dreams of getting to Pitchfork-at-its-height levels. Like, if it happened, cool, but we're five people [and] it just doesn't seem super realistic. So we just wanted to acknowledge that. And, also, we just wanted to kind of concentrate on the writing.
At Pitchfork, I could see the stats, and you can tell how much time people spend on a given page. And there were definitely some people who would just click on a review to see the score and not read it. Or, whenever someone would pass it around on social media, a lot of the time it would just be [about] the score. As a writer there, [that] could feel a little bit frustrating. You know, it's getting more people to hopefully read it, but at the same time, [the score isn’t] the point. So we wanted to kind of reflect that, and we hoped that people coming to Hearing Things would come for the writing. That was the thinking.
What was the process of creating Hearing Things like? How did you decide that this was the next step forward?
It started when, a couple of days after the layoffs, this person emailed me. He was someone I'd never heard of before or spoken with. And he was like, “Hey, I want to start a new music website with you and three or four other people that’s independent. And you guys would own half of the company and I'd own the other half.” And that was it, it was a short email. His name was Vaughn Millette. And he was in New York. So, I met up with him. I didn't even know what I really wanted to do moving forward. You know, you work somewhere for 15 years and [getting laid off is] an earthquake in your life. And then you think, “Should I still be doing this? Should I be trying to do something else?” So, given the media landscape, [creating an independent publication] wasn’t initially super encouraging.
After Pitchfork, I didn't know what I would do next, but I decided to hear him out. He was very encouraging. We met a lot of times and just kind of talked out the contours of what Hearing Things would be and who else I would want to work there. So, you know, I got in touch with these other folks that I worked with at Pitchfork and they were excited, which made me more excited. And we all met with him and started working in June. The idea that this person was putting faith in us to do this and that we could also be getting paid as we figured it out was a big deal.
It was a pretty DIY operation. We could have just started a Substack in a week or something, but we wanted to try to make [Hearing Things] stand apart. My wife is a developer and she also does design, so she helped us with designing the website, which was amazing. We got another developer to make it a functional site. And that part was really stressful, to be honest, because I had an idea of what the site should look like and how it should work, and it took a minute to get there. So there were a couple of weeks where it was just like, “Are we able to do this in the timeframe that we want?” In the end, it all worked out.
Do you have any advice for young people who want to pursue music writing or culture writing right now?
I would say that, at this point, it would be good to not focus on only one part of culture, like music or movies or TV or something. Easier said than done, but I think my advice would be to have a few specialties in that sense. I'm essentially a music journalist, full stop. There aren’t a lot of those. And even if Hearing Things lasts forever, which it hopefully will, it's not like a hundred other positions are looking for [solely] a music journalist. So, I would say to try to diversify your skillset that way. And also, similarly, I think it's good to just be really good at copy editing, fact checking, and the nuts and bolts [of journalism and writing]. I started my career as a fact checker, and I think it really helped me to this day to be meticulous and make sure [my writing] is solid on a factual level. So, it’s good to try to be proficient at a lot of different things within culture. Like, I really like doing reviews and criticism, but I also like doing profiles. It's like being able to do both of those things well is good or even more investigative stories, where you're sourcing people and talking to a few people to try to get to the bottom of something. Being able to do all of those things well is pretty rare actually, even for people that are further on in their career. Whenever we come across someone who can do that, all of us are really impressed. That would be my general advice. I don't think it's easy, but I do think it’s still doable. One of my coworkers (Jill Mapes) did a little blog post about Charli XCX being on SNL, and to be able to speak on something like a TV show with such a long history is important too, because we're all digesting all of these different sorts of media. Why would we try to shut those other [modes of media, art and culture] out? If anything, Hearing Things is trying to bring those other things in as much as possible.
One thing that I've noticed a lot in reading Hearing Things is that it's a lot more personal than Pitchfork. Is that intentional?
100%. Yeah, it's really intentional, in part because of the nature of the site. It really is the five of us doing everything. I feel like at Pitchfork, even though there weren't that many people, maybe between 20 and 30, it felt like a monolith. Pitchfork is like an institutional stamp, which has its benefits, but for us, starting something new, it just didn't really make sense. So we all have this experience and, even with the third space idea, I think [the more personal nature of Hearing Things] ties into that a little bit too. We want people to feel like [they] know us, not in a creepy way, but that we’re real people, basically. That was a big focus for us. We're a team, but we're a small team. For me personally, it's been fun to put that part of myself out there that maybe I would be more reluctant to at Pitchfork.
I saw that you guys have a podcast now, Waste Or Taste.
We do! As far as bringing the personal in, I think a podcast is such a great medium for that because you're literally hearing a person's actual voice. It just increases the intimacy that much more as opposed to just, you know, reading words on a screen. So we wanted to do that. And that is also part of our plan to make this more personal and get people to feel like they know us a little bit. We just want this to be fun, because we don't have time to put together a fully produced, This American Life type of podcast. We want to do something that was doable for us, but also that people would actually like to hear. Hopefully that's where it's going.
It reminds me a little bit of the Pitchfork Review (Pitchfork’s podcast that ran from 2020 to 2024) in some ways, with guests coming on and talking about certain songs or albums.
Yeah. I was one of the producers of that. I was on it sometimes, but I was more involved behind the scenes. I did take lessons from that as far as thinking about what the most fun things that we did were, and trying to reproduce it all [with Waste or Taste].
Jill [Mapes] graciously offered to host the podcast, essentially. And she's just really fun to listen to. [The setup of the podcast] also spreads the work around a little, so it's not just the same exact people talking every time. And we've been discussing maybe trying to get an artist in there. That would be fun.
At WKCO Blog, we each blurb at the end of the year about our personal favorite albums that came out that year. Do you have an album of the year?
I think it is the Los Campesinos! album. It's called All Hell. They have been one of my favorite bands for around 15 years. And they just personally have been kind of a model for me on how to live a creative life that has principles. They've been that for me. And I did an interview with their singer, one of the early pieces on Hearing Things. And he was so generous. Like, I interviewed him when the site didn't exist. He was like, “music needs something like this, so I will happily spend three hours talking to you.” I'll never forget that. Him agreeing to do this for Hearing Things is a reflection of his values, as well as what he's espousing in the music, in the lyrics, and in how the band goes about putting on shows. They have a thing where they offer low-income tickets for every show, where if someone, for example, doesn't have a job or got laid off, they could apply and then buy tickets that are a cheaper price. And then, the album is incredible. I don't want to make this seem like, “these are just nice people.” The album is really good. And it shows that this millennial band can still be relevant. They can write these lyrics that are kind of funny and also kind of hopeless. And that really hits someone like me and then others too. There are lots of parts of that album that I just personally connect with. So I think that would probably be my favorite at the moment.
On the topic of 2024 albums, I have to ask… how did you feel about Charli XCX’s Brat?
I thought it was great. [Brat’s release] was one of the few times where I was like, “[something like a Pitchfork score], however arbitrary, can be meaningful.” I remember thinking, when Brat came out, that if I were still at Pitchfork at that time, there would have been a ‘10’ conversation. I do think there could have been a conversation there. I listened to it for the first time and I was like, whoa. I did the Rising piece on her in 2011, and she's just been an artist that Pitchfork has championed for her entire run, even though they famously gave Vroom Vroom a bad score. But it just seemed to make sense to me to give Brat a 10. At this point it feels almost lame to say because it had such an explosive impact. But I honestly did feel that from the first listen, when no one knew what was going to happen [with Brat]. It's interesting to think about. It's one of those [releases] you can't ignore. And I feel like she was the zeitgeist artist of this year.
What do you see moving forward with Hearing Things?
Well, we do want to do events. I think it would be really fun to start doing some smaller shows in the city for artists that we've gotten behind. And book readings and some sort of listening sessions might also be good. We’ve talked about trying to do live, in-person interviews with artists. We're still figuring out how to make everything happen with just us and keep producing at a pretty high level. We do have a bunch of other ideas – we put in our first merch order. At the start, we just want to be like, “Let's get [the writing component] locked in and then expand from there.”
I really like the idea of Hearing Things doing events and serving as a social space for music fans, because I think there aren't really a lot of, what you said, third spaces!
That's exactly it. I agree. Hopefully people will show up. I am a little bit scared that people are so used to their bubble, you know, like interacting in a certain way, but so many of our transformative experiences with music came at shows or even just Tower Records or something. That's how we made friends and found common interests with other human beings. It feels quaint, but that really means a lot to us. So, anytime we can do that, it's a real bonus.
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