Much was been written on Pitchfork, but the article by the Washington Post's J. Freedom DuLac about the hugely influential music site, "Giving Indie Acts A Plug, or Pulling It," is the best Coolfer has read. What DuLac has done is capture the business and cultural impact of Pitchfork and add the personality of founder and editor-in-chief Ryan Schreiber.

DuLac spent time with Schreiber at this year's SXSW to witness a day in the life of the country's leading indie music trendsetter. To his interview DuLac intersperses stories of people touched by Pitchfork's hand: Merge Records, which benefitted from a near-perfect review of an album by The Arcade Fire; a product manager for Chicago's Reckless Records, who tracks the sites reviews to help manage inventory; and artists who taken hits to their careers after ruthless Pitchfork reviews. That review was for a solo album by Travis Morrison of the Dismemberment Plan.

"The album was branded with a dreaded 0.0 rating (Liz Phair and Sonic Youth are among the other artists who've suffered that indignity), and Morrison's bandwagon quickly emptied: College radio programmers cooled to his new project, a record store in Texas initially refused to stock the CD, and fans suddenly decided they probably shouldn't like Morrison anymore, either."

Think back to the guest-blogged Coolfer post about Pitchfork and its sometimes negative influence, "Stick a Fork In It." This industry insider decried Pitchfork's ability to harm a budding band's career. Most people queried felt it was better to get no review if was mediocre or worse.

Such is the potential danger of a powerful voice like Pitchfork -- and really no other single magazine or website to challenge it. Even when Pitchfork does good like when it helped jumpstart the career of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah it can do some bad. DuLac writes of being unable to get inside a club because of the mass of people waiting to see Clap Your Hands. Schreiber is "agitated" by the long line and tells DuLac the band got "too much too soon." Of course, Schreiber helped create that long line and gave the band too much too soon.