The world of music criticism got its own scandal last week when Village Voice senior associate editor Nick Sylvester was suspended for fabrications in a cover story he wrote for last week's Village Voice. The article was a lightweight piece about New York men who use the Neil Strauss book "The Game" as a how-to manual for picking up women. Sylvester has admitted that a meeting recounted in the article, in which he wrote he met with three Los Angeles television writers who came to New York to test the strategies in "The Game," never took place.

Sylvester primarily writes music reviews and articles for the Voice, and he an associate editor at indie tastemaker Pitchfork. It has been reported that Sylvester was asked to resign by Pitchfork. (His name was quickly removed from the company's masthead.)

Gawker has kept the Sylvester posts coming and now has a Nick Sylvester category to compile the news and developments.

For a time "Nick Sylvester" was one of Technorati's most searched phrases, and a quick glance at the posts written about the scandal shows a blogosphere that's disgusted by The Voice and Sylvester. The comments at Gothamist are harsh as well. His annoying speech at the recent Plug Awards didn't exactly endear him to New Yorkers not already chafed by his cocksure writing style.

All that aside, Sylvester's music writing was often a rare bright spot for both The Voice and Pitchfork, a culturally significant website with a roster plagued by mediocre writing skills and shallow music knowledge. Sylvester has as good a talent for dissecting the heart of a matter as he does a tendency to create a new hipster lexicon with each assignment.

The Nation's Christine Smallwood, in a blog post titled "Liar, Liar, Pants of Fire," ripped Sylvester's ethics and "pretentious, garbled, mumbo-jumbo name-dropping music reviews," and finished with a prediction that shows how difficult it is to undo one's career these days: "He's more famous than he was before, and in the long-run, his career will be just fine.... He'll still get a book deal."