Troy Johnson
This week, Troy Johnson, long-time music editor at San Diego CityBeat , frequent guest on These Day's Weekend Preview, and scruffy but silver-tongued champion of the local music scene announced he was leaving his post at CityBeat. Why? He's going glossy, at least on the page. Troy will be the new senior editor at RIVIERA magazine . I chatted him up about the new post this morning over email.
Troy, congratulations on the new gig, but I have to say, I never really pictured you doing the modern luxury beat. What will you be up to at RIVIERA?
Funny, I used to think the same thing. When I first LOOKED at RIVIERA , my reaction was "oh god, bourgeois fluff." But then I actually READ the magazine. The writing is on par with national publications; they share writers with the Times and a few other nationals. And whereas some of these "high society" magazines can be nauseatingly sycophantic--like puppies at the heels of the elite-- RIVIERA has an insightful, observational tone (which comes from Ed-in-Chief Gillian Flynn, who's a hardcore newsy vet of the Associated Press). I've always wanted to helm my own publication--eventually on the national level--but I took a fun little detour through TV Land. Now that I'm off the tube, I'm going pit bull at that goal.
Senior Editor at a glossy monthly is a good start--then a masters, a stuffy little PhD, the whole egghead parade. But I wasn't willing quite yet to head for subway life in New York. I surf every day and, trite as this may seem, I'm not willing to give that up. My beat at RIVIERA will be food/drink/art/culture. I'm the sort of geek who gets excited by good cookware, so I'm really looking forward to the gastronomy kick.
You wrote for CityBeat for five years. What will you miss most?
There's a lot to miss about CityBeat. That's a small paper built on chewing gum, bailing wire and severely passionate, severely talented, severely underpaid editors and writers. I'll miss the unfiltered edge of it. I'll miss making up words because they feel right, flipping the bird to AP style and spell check. The hardest part about making this switch was being willing to give up my post as "the music guy." I dedicated a good portion of my life to San Diego's music scene, for which I've been respected and detested. But I was bored. I didn't have the desire to be out in rock dives four nights a week anymore. And when you lose that, you gotta hand over the reins. I didn't want to end up the creepy 40-year-old taking notes in the corner of The Casbah . It's a crisis in music journalism that I wanted no part of--the aging rock critic who never goes out except to "marquee shows," but occupies space as a Music Editor because that's all they know. I'll still be at places like The Tower Bar because I still intensely love good, underground music--it just won't be my job. With RIVIERA, I'll get to handle food, drink and the arts (not music, that's Seth Combs' beat, and he does it well), which will make me a bit more human and a more well-rounded editor.
