With the Village Voice's critical credibility in tatters after firing legends like Robert Christgau, Gawker Media's Idolator blog hopes to fill the roll of the music poll Pazz and Job with its own offering: Jackin' Pop.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

“For those who had long turned to The Voice to help guide them through the realm of pop, rock and hip-hop,” the announcement read, “the 51-year-old alt-weekly now had about as much musical credibility as, say, a three-month-old blog.”

The new survey will be organized by Michaelangelo Matos, a well regarded freelance writer who has served as music editor at the Voice-owned Seattle Weekly. (When New Times Media acquired Village Voice Media, it also took its name.) Jackin’ Pop will have some new technological bells and whistles, like demographic breakdowns of ballots, but will largely be modeled after Pazz & Jop. Mr. Matos, 31, said it was as much a homage to that model as a protest against the new Voice.

“Pazz & Jop has always been about intellectual music coverage,” he said. “There are people at The Voice doing good, smart work, but the overall culture does not smile upon it being particularly thoughtful.”

Rob Harvilla, The Voice’s new music editor, who will oversee the continuation of Pazz & Jop, disagrees with that assessment. “I understand the consternation regarding” Mr. Christgau, he said. “And we’re going to have to prove ourselves to the critical world at large. But I think it’s worth doing.”

Ballots for the two polls are to begin going out this week.

The Pazz & Jop model, with easily aggregated rankings and spunky, personal, bite-size commentary, is ideally suited to an online update; The Voice itself has a Web version of the poll (villagevoice.com), in which each ballot can be viewed and cross-referenced.

“Pazz & Jop was kind of a bloggy idea before the Internet,” said Michael Hirschorn, an executive vice president at VH1 and a former editor of Spin. “That kind of obsessive narrow fanaticism has been democratized and spread throughout hundreds of blogs.”

Though the Idolator poll (idolator.com) will be open to some bloggers — Mr. Matos said that anyone who writes regularly about music will be eligible — its main constituency will be professional music critics, the same old-fashioned, old-media elite who contribute to Pazz & Jop. This suggests Idolator is betting that readers are still interested in the idea of professional rock critics and their opinions.