More critics get the ax
This job of movie critic is getting lonelier by the day.
Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, announced Monday that it avoided layoffs when 36 employees took the buyout offer. According to this report on Defamer, that number includes the paper's entire movie section: Movie editor Pat Wiedenkeller and critics Jan Stuart and Gene Seymour.
(David Poland, editor of Movie City News, blogs that the Newsday moves will leave only five full-time movie critics within the 11 major dailies of the Tribune Company chain: Carina Chocano and Kenneth Turan at the Los Angeles Times, Michael Phillips at the Chicago Tribune, Michael Sragow at the Baltimore Sun, and Roger Moore at the Orlando Sentinel.)
Closer to home for the Cricket, two critics' jobs at papers in the Media News Group chain (which also owns The Salt Lake Tribune) are going away.
At the San Jose Mercury News, critic Bruce Newman has reportedly been reassigned to a general-features beat. And Mary F. Pols, the critic for the Contra Costa Times, is listed here as one of 107 employees at MNG's Bay Area papers to take a buyout offer.
(The Cricket counts these critics still working for MNG papers: Himself, Lisa Kennedy at the Denver Post, Tom Long at the Detroit News, Chris Hewitt at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and Glenn Whipp and Bob Strauss at the L.A. Daily News. There may be others, though, that have slipped the Cricket's mind.)
When the folks who own newspapers run the numbers, the math tells them that a staff movie critic can be more expensive than running wire-service reviews. But something else is lost: The flavor of a unique voice.
Look at what happened to the San Diego Union-Tribune, which found itself apologizing for running an AP review of "The Other Boleyn Girl" that was deemed sexist. (Hat tip: Movie City News.)
Every time we lose a movie critic's job, we lose a unique voice championing movies. Often that voice is female or a person of color (Pols, for example, is a member of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists), in a profession that needs as much diversity as possible.
Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, announced Monday that it avoided layoffs when 36 employees took the buyout offer. According to this report on Defamer, that number includes the paper's entire movie section: Movie editor Pat Wiedenkeller and critics Jan Stuart and Gene Seymour.
(David Poland, editor of Movie City News, blogs that the Newsday moves will leave only five full-time movie critics within the 11 major dailies of the Tribune Company chain: Carina Chocano and Kenneth Turan at the Los Angeles Times, Michael Phillips at the Chicago Tribune, Michael Sragow at the Baltimore Sun, and Roger Moore at the Orlando Sentinel.)
Closer to home for the Cricket, two critics' jobs at papers in the Media News Group chain (which also owns The Salt Lake Tribune) are going away.
At the San Jose Mercury News, critic Bruce Newman has reportedly been reassigned to a general-features beat. And Mary F. Pols, the critic for the Contra Costa Times, is listed here as one of 107 employees at MNG's Bay Area papers to take a buyout offer.
(The Cricket counts these critics still working for MNG papers: Himself, Lisa Kennedy at the Denver Post, Tom Long at the Detroit News, Chris Hewitt at the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and Glenn Whipp and Bob Strauss at the L.A. Daily News. There may be others, though, that have slipped the Cricket's mind.)
When the folks who own newspapers run the numbers, the math tells them that a staff movie critic can be more expensive than running wire-service reviews. But something else is lost: The flavor of a unique voice.
Look at what happened to the San Diego Union-Tribune, which found itself apologizing for running an AP review of "The Other Boleyn Girl" that was deemed sexist. (Hat tip: Movie City News.)
Every time we lose a movie critic's job, we lose a unique voice championing movies. Often that voice is female or a person of color (Pols, for example, is a member of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists), in a profession that needs as much diversity as possible.
Labels: disappearing critics
6:24 AM
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2 Comments:
The sad truth is that studios don't want critics, because critics tell the truth about film (or they're supposed to). And as the business connections between publishers and studios grow more intertwined, I'm afraid media outlets will simply look at critics as something unnecessary. After all, all you need to know about what a film's about, and how it's what it's about (to paraphrase Ebert), you can learn from trailers and Entertainment Tonight and press releases, right?
I'm pulling for you, Sean, but I'm really pessimistic and cynical about how long your job will be allowed to last in the 21st century world of megamedia domination.
I've posted similar comments on other blogs, but at the risk of repeating myself:
Newspaper execs say they can save money by using wire reviews instead of paying a full-time critic. This is true, but the corollary is also true: that there are thousands of other venues out there, both print and online, using those same canned reviews. By forcing a generic product onto your readers, you're giving them a push to go elsewhere. And you've given them one less reason to see your paper as indispensable.
Tribune only has five full-time critics now. MediaNews has just a handful. Gannett has only USA Today and Phoenix. When I left the Florida Film Critics' Circle in 2005, we had about 17 members. I think they're down to three or four now.
We will soon reach a state where all reviews come from NY, LA or AP.
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