Editing Help Wanted
A brief note on this year's jazz critics poll
As you are probably aware, I’ve helped Francis Davis out with some of the more technical and/or tedious aspects of his annual Jazz Critics Poll. I wrote about this at some length as we were wrapping up the 2022 poll in Memoirs of a Pollwatcher. Since then, Francis became increasingly ill, and died in April, 2025. My own personal circumstances has often left me in need of a practical project within my competencies. Often having nothing better to do, keeping the poll going fills my personal needs, serves a community need, and honors a critic and friend who has done much to enrich our lives. It also, by the end of each poll cycle, wears me out and drives me crazy. I’m writing this in such a moment.
Voting for the 20th Annual Francis Davis Jazz Critics Poll officially closed on December 21. It took a few days to get all the ballots, including a few stragglers, counted and checked, with footnotes added on various odd details. After that, I started working on a set of essays that ArtsFuse will publish along with the results tables. (Usually that’s top 50 new jazz albums, 20 rara avis, 5-10 vocals/Latin/debuts, but this year I’m aligning the exact cutoffs with vote counts. Complete results, with every album named by anyone, and every voter’s full ballot, will appear on the poll website, cited above.)
Aside from frustration with email, I rather enjoy the voting part: it’s the only time of the year when I get personal email from real people, often ones I’ve long admired, most laden with well wishes and tips on new albums I should listen to. On the other hand, the writing phase . . . well, let’s just reiterate: wears me out and drives me crazy.
One problem is that there’s so much one can write about, it’s near impossible to narrow that down and hone it to fit into a realistic schedule. I figured I had Christmas-to-New Years week to work with. I have minimal social obligations, so should have had enough time to work with. Moreover, I thought I had come up with a scheme to possibly distribute the workload. Moreover, the calendar suggested that the “first week of January” didn’t start until Jan. 5.
That didn’t work out, so now we’re aiming for the week of Jan. 12. I’ve written a fair amount, and I’m willing to go with what I have (or hope to have by Sunday evening). But I’d really like to get some more eyes on my writing: to get some feedback, to flag errors and misjudgments, to cut redundancy, to point out things that are confusing and/or need elaboration. I also have the essays structured so I can easily add reader comments at the end. I’ve collected a few of those, and will add more as I find them (or possibly write my own). So I’d welcome those as well.
I’ve occasionally requested help in my blog posts, and that’s almost never worked. This newsletter is more direct, and more timely, so I thought it might be my best shot. If you would like to help, get in touch with me (this page should work, preferably today or tomorrow [Jan. 11, 2026]; we’re going to press next week no matter how crappy my essays are). One perk I can offer is an advance peek at the essays and results.
By the way, Music Week, Loose Tabs, and pretty much everything else I write or do is being held back, hostage until the poll is released. Also on hold are some badly needed design changes to the website, especially the top level. I’ve long wanted to overhaul the website, and expected to have something by poll publication time, but everyday life keeps getting in the way. I’ll have more to say about all that jazz and so forth once the poll is out. All I care to say now is that the one thing I’ve learned hardest this year is that time keeps marching on, no matter how much we hate what it’s doing to us.