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Former Phoenix journalist wins coveted Taylor Swift reporting gig

Bryan West may have just scored the job of a lifetime as Gannett's first full-time Taylor Swift reporter, but the internet isn't happy about it.
Image: Bryan West met Taylor Swift in the backstage at the Phoenix-area opening night of the “Reputation” tour in 2018. "Our ears touched, and I thought for a second, I could be straight," West said of the meeting.
Bryan West met Taylor Swift in the backstage at the Phoenix-area opening night of the “Reputation” tour in 2018. "Our ears touched, and I thought for a second, I could be straight," West said of the meeting. Bryan West

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Former Phoenix journalist Bryan West just can’t win. Days after Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the U.S., announced that the 35-year-old had been selected to take up the helm as the company’s first Taylor Swift reporter, he was met with opposition.

Newsroom ethicists criticized West for unabashedly expressing his admiration of Swift in a job application video published in Variety’s announcement of his appointment. In an era where tensions between traditional news reporting focused on impartiality butts heads against biased entertainment reporting, West acknowledged that he would have to walk a fine line — sort of.

“I may be a big Swiftie, but I can report on Taylor objectively. I can tell you right now three songs that I can’t stand by her,” West said in his application video.

The sacrilege of a Swiftie refuting the utter brilliance of every Swift song aside, many have taken to X to express their distaste for a man taking the job.

“A 35-year-old guy in an industry rife with layoffs beating out hundreds of women to become the official reporter on a pop star sounds like a '90s Hugh Grant movie where it's revealed over a record scratch in the trailer that he actually knows nothing about the pop star,” wrote documentary filmmaker Ben Crew on X.

Crew is just one of many who have taken to X to criticize Gannett’s hire for being white, a man, a fan, too biased and not biased enough. West even managed to upset the sports world.

“I would say this position’s no different than being a sports journalist who’s a fan of the home team,” West told Variety. “I just came from Phoenix, and all of the anchors there were wearing Diamondbacks gear; they want the Diamondbacks to win.”

Boston sports and entertainment journalist, Frankie de la Cretaz, lambasted West for comparing his new appointment to that of hallowed sports journalism.

“Any sports journalist will tell you the No. 1 rule of sports journalism is no cheering in the press box,” de la Cretaz said in a TikTok. “It’s one of the hallmarks of the profession. It’s one of the first things you learn. The idea, of course, being that if you are a fan of the team, that you can’t be an unbiased reporter.”

But does any of the backlash both Gannett and West are facing have merit? According to Benjamin Goggin, an editor at NBC News, the answer is yes.

“The problem with the Taylor Swift reporter hire is that Gannet hired a full stan, rather than someone who is capable of being critical of one of the most powerful people in pop culture,” Goggin wrote on X.
click to enlarge
In June, Forbes named Taylor Swift the second-richest self-made woman in the U.S. music industry.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

A powerful icon

There is no denying the juggernaut that is Taylor Swift. Her “Eras Tour,” which opened in Phoenix in March, continues to pack stadiums across the U.S. and has been extended through the end of 2024. It also is on track to be the highest-grossing concert tour of all time, at $1.4 billion.

In June, Forbes named Swift the second-richest self-made woman in the U.S. music industry. Swift’s current net worth is $740 million and she is expected to top $1 billion by the end of her tour.

The tour has become so profitable that it is independently boosting the gross domestic product of every state it visits. Swift’s two Denver shows were estimated to contribute $140 million to Colorado’s GDP, according to The Common Sense Institute. The phenomenon has since been dubbed “Swiftonomics.”

Swift’s economic impact also is affecting the music industry’s labor market. The singer gave 50 Eras Tour truck drivers $100,000 bonuses each in August as part of a $55 million bonus shelled out to the tour’s crew.

“She’s a very talented performer, but a smart businesswoman at the same time,” Alicia Sasser Modestino, associate professor of public policy and urban affairs and economics at Northeastern University, told Northeastern Global News.

Modestino added that employers often will follow dramatic changes in compensation based on the scarcity of the workforce. With the Teamsters Union announcing a strike the same month Swift doled out bonuses, Modestino suggested that the combination of the artist's influence, finances and perfect timing are just further examples of Swift’s disruptive force.

Swift’s economic impact can't be underplayed, but there is more to the her power than dollars and cents. When she attended Kansas City Chief Travis Kelce’s NFL game on Sept. 24, it broke the internet.

“Swift is perhaps the only star on earth with the fame to overwhelm an NFL Sunday,” Wall Street Journal sports columnist Jason Gay said.

All of this to say, Swift has immense power, both economic and cultural, so who reports on her matters.

‘Haters gonna hate’

In response to those in the news world who are questioning the legitimacy of West’s hiring, Lark-Marie Antón, Gannett’s chief communications officer, wrote in an email to The New York Times that, “Haters gonna hate.” Antón added that West’s credentials stand on their own.

To an extent, Antón is right. West has won two Emmy Awards and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for his journalism.

He’s also had some sketchy moments in his career.

In 2017, Phoenix New Times raised concerns about the legitimacy of West’s report on the defacing of a confederate memorial at the Arizona State Capitol. West’s report for KPNX-TV was later redacted after surveillance video of the incident surfaced. Although it was later reinstated, West’s professional Facebook page also was deleted following the incident.

A year later, West went on an alcohol-infused romp through Phoenix that resulted in him ramming a car in the McDonald's drive-through at Seventh Avenue and Van Buren Street, flying through a stop sign in a residential neighborhood at 50 mph and almost hitting a pedestrian outside of a nearby apartment complex. At the time, a preliminary breath test showed that West had a blood alcohol level of 0.239%. In Arizona, .08% is the legal limit.

West pleaded guilty to extreme DUI and failing to obey police commands in a plea deal that dropped three other charges.  On Jan. 22, 2019, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge sentenced him to two years of supervised probation and nine days behind bars, New Times’ Ray Stern reported.

Amid suspicions that his addiction was tainting his reporting, West stepped away from journalism before returning to fill Gannett’s coveted Swift position. West said he has been sober since 2018.

Whether or not West’s new appointment will carry as much weight as the internet seems to think it will, one thing is certain: West’s is a lose-lose position.

“This is a brutal fan base, and I don’t think there was ever going to be any winning for whoever they hired into this role,” Cretaz told The New York Times. “Either he doesn’t get respect from the general public because he’s a fan and seen as biased, or he doesn’t get respect from the fandom itself because he’s not the right kind of fan.”