| Jim Malec | |
| Occupation: | Journalist, music critic |
Jim Malec is an American journalist and pop music critic known for writing about country music.[1] Malec attended State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota, where he worked as an editor for the college's student newspaper and was involved in a censorship dispute regarding student free speech rights.[2] He was named "Best Local Blogger About Country Music" by the Nashville Scene in 2009, with the paper commenting that he is "rough on country music in the way that only a person who loves and thinks deeply about an art form can be." Malec's work has appeared in American Songwriter,[3] Slant Magazine,[4] Westword[5] and other outlets, and he is a contributor to the Nashville Scene's annual country music critics poll.[6] [7]
Malec is noteworthy for his coverage of Taylor Swift in the early stages of her career, referring to her as "a superstar in the making" in 2007.[8] His 2011 article "Taylor Swift: The Garden In The Machine"[9] chronicles Swift's move to Nashville and her integration into the Nashville songwriting community.