Re-appearing Music Critic, The Case Of

So what exactly happened, or didn’t happen, to Pierre Ruhe? For the uninitiated, he’s the Atlanta Journal-Constitution classical music critic/reporter who became the latest symbol of the newspaper world’s disregard for everything arts. Now, Henry Fogel drops that Ruhe’s been re-appointed to his post.

But Hank Klibanoff, the AJC’s managing editor for enterprise, told me today that Ruhe’s job was never really in jeopardy.

The AJC recently cut staff through buyouts, Klibanoff said, and then the paper’s management decided staffers would have to reapply for existing jobs. That means technically Ruhe could have been replaced. But as Klibanoff told me: “I love Pierre’s criticism and I love Pierre and there was no interest in changing that job.”

So what about the stories that stated that the AJC was cutting arts coverage and Ruhe specifically? There’s also the May letter-to-the-editor from Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Robert Spano that opened with the line, “The AJC recently announced to its staff that designated reviewers for classical music, visual arts, and literature will be eliminated.”

These cuts were reported as fact in Creative Loafing, Musical America and repeated in the blogs published by Fogel and New Yorker critic Alex Ross.

“If Alex Ross or Henry Fogel would like to come into our organization and quibble with our administrative machinations and how we reorganized our newsroom, that’s fine, but don’t do it based on falsehoods and misperceptions,” said Klibanoff. “Call and ask. Don’t cover behind a blog when a simple phone call or an e-mail could have gotten the truth.”

I called Scott Henry, the Creative Loafing writer who reported Ruhe’s post would be eliminated. He said he never tried to reach Klibanoff or Ruhe. He said he got his information from three or four staffers at the AJC, all of whom would not agree to be named.

“If it turns out to be wrong, I would rather not have gotten it wrong and that would have entailed making a few more phone calls,” Henry said. “You have to understand, there were a lot of positions changing. And in most cases, when I did make phone calls to staffers, they were not returned. Especially to people I didn’t know. I don’t know Pierre Ruhe.”

As for the ASO, Charles Wade, the orchestra’s vice president of marketing, said he regrets an e-mail sent out to board members at one point stating that the AJC had cut its arts staff, but didn’t apologize for Spano’s letter.

“With regard to that e-mail, I apologized to Hank,” said Wade. “That was definitely a mistake on our end and I apologized straight away on that. We took care of that part. The more important part, I thought, was, as I said to Hank, 'why we didn’t call,' and I said, 'we thought we’d write you a letter.'”