Anne Midgette in the New York Times and Wynne Delacoma in the Chicago Sun-Times. In 2007, The New York Times wrote that classical music criticism, which it characterized as "a high-minded endeavor that has been around at least as long as newspapers", had undergone "a series of hits in recent months" with the elimination, downgrading, or redefinition of critics' jobs at newspapers in Atlanta, Minneapolis, and elsewhere, citing New York magazine's Peter G. Davis, "one of the most respected voices of the craft, [who] said he had been forced out after 26 years". Viewing "robust analysis, commentary and reportage as vital to the health of the art form", The New York Times stated in 2007 that it continued to maintain "a staff of three full-time classical music critics and three freelancers", noting also that classical music criticism had become increasingly available on blogs, and that a number of other major newspapers "still have full-time classical music critics", including (in 2007) the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Baltimore Sun, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The Boston Globe. Popular 20th century rock criticism Music writers only started "treating pop and rock music seriously" in 1964 "after the breakthrough of the Beatles". In their book Rock Criticism from the Beginning, Ulf Lindberg and his co-writers say that rock criticism appears to have been "slower to develop in the U.S. than in England". One of the early British music magazines, Melody Maker, complained in 1967 about how "newspapers and magazines are continually hammering [i.e., attacking] pop music". From 1964, Melody Maker led its rival publications in terms of approaching music and musicians as a subject for serious study rather than merely entertainment. Staff reporters such as Chris Welch and Ray Coleman applied a perspective previously reserved for jazz artists to the rise of American-influenced local rock and pop groups, anticipating the advent of rock critics. Among Britain's broadsheet newspapers, pop music gained exposure in the arts section of The Times when William Mann, the paper's classical music critic, wrote an appreciation of the Beatles in December 1963. In early 1965, The Observer, the country's highbrow Sunday newspaper, signalled a reversal of the establishment's cultural snobbery towards pop music by appointing George Melly as its "critic of pop culture". Following Tony Palmer's arrival at The Observer, the first daily newspaper to employ a dedicated rock critic was The Guardian, with the appointment of Geoffrey