The Palm Beach Post said "yes" to the more than 300 employees who applied for a buyout, according to the alt-weekly there, The Broward-Palm Beach New Times.

One of those, according to the New Times, is the paper's movie and theater critic, Hap Erstein. He makes 32 movie critics who have lost their jobs, in one way or another, since the beginning of 2006.

Labels: disappearing critics

So, what do you do when you're no longer a "film critic"?

Mary F. Pols - who was film critic for the San Jose Mercury News, Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times until she took a buyout in March - writes, on the web site of the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, about the mental shift that comes about from no longer doing the job she loved.

I still wake every Tuesday with that familiar expectation that my day will end, as it did for nearly eight years, and as it does for most film critics, with a drive home from a screening, the fresh material of a new movie dancing in my head, with both the dread and adrenaline rush of Wednesday morning's deadline ahead of me. If it's Tuesday, this must be the multiplex. The job may be gone, but those circadian rhythms linger.

It's not all bad news, though. Pols has been on the book-tour circuit, flogging her critically acclaimed memoir, Accidentally on Purpose. She also notes the best benefit of quitting: "No more obligation to retain the absurdities that spring forth from George Lucas’s mind."

(Photo: Benet Pols)

Labels: disappearing critics

Two of the three movie critics at The Washington Post are taking buyouts: Desson Thomson and Pulitzer Prize-winner Stephen Hunter.

They are among more than 100 Post newsroom staffers who are leaving in the most recent round of buyouts, the paper announced today. They include the Post's veteran political columnist David Broder and military reporter Thomas E. Ricks, both Pulitzer winners, and sports columnist Tony Kornheiser. (Kornheiser, who hasn't filed a column since 2005, will continue his daily Talking Points video; Broder will continue his column, on a contract basis.)

The Post story quotes Hunter: "I realized about a year ago I no longer had to be the film critic. ... Part of it was New York Avenue fatigue, part of it was movie fatigue, part of it was CGI fatigue. I'm doing what The Post would not do: I'm firing myself for being too old." (Hunter also writes detective novels; one of them was the basis of the movie "Shooter.")

Thomson, during his final online chat this morning, said he would be writing on his website, DessonThomson.com. He will also continue to write reviews for the Post as a free-lancer. Hunter would do the same, at least until August. Whether anyone will be moved in to back up Ann Hornaday, the Post's remaining movie critic, is yet to be seen.

Hunter and Thomson become the 30th and 31st writers on the list of movie critics who have lost their jobs since 2006. The list was first published here in April, and it looks like it's time to run it again:

1. Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, buyout, 2006
2. Steve Ramos, Cincinnati CityBeat, position eliminated, April 2006
3. Jami Bernard, New York Daily News, contract not renewed, May 2006
4. Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News, buyout, fall 2006
5. Dennis Lim, Village Voice, laid off, October 2006
6. Michael Atkinson, Village Voice, laid off, October 2006
7. Mark Burger, Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal, laid off, November 2006
8. Barbara Lester, CityLink (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.), position eliminated, early 2007
9. Bob Ross, Tampa Tribune, laid off, April 2007
10. Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News, buyout, May 2007
11. Phoebe Flowers, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, reassigned, May 2007
12. Dave Gathman, Elgin (Ill.) Courier-News, staff reorganization, May 2007
13. Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, buyout, summer 2007
14. Jack Garner, Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, retired, June 2007
15. Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune, quit, July 2007
16. Rob Nelson, City Pages (Minneapolis-St. Paul), position eliminated, August 2007
17. Matt Soergel, Florida Times-Union, reassigned, October 2007
18. Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press, buyout, December 2007
19. Jack Mathews, New York Daily News, retired, December 2007
20. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, retired, December 2007
21. Ed Bradley, Flint (Mich.) Journal, buyout, January 2008
22. David Elliott, San Diego Union-Tribune, laid off, January 2008
23. Jan Stuart, Newsday, buyout, March 2008
24. Gene Seymour, Newsday, buyout, March 2008
25. Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News, reassigned, March 2008
26. Mary F. Pols, Contra Costa Times/Oakland Tribune, buyout, March 2008
27. Nathan Lee, Village Voice, laid off, March 2008
28. David Ansen, Newsweek, buyout, March 2008
29. Glenn Kenny, Premiere, terminated, May 2008
30. Stephen Hunter, The Washington Post, buyout, May 2008
31. Desson Thomson, The Washington Post, buyout, May 2008

Labels: disappearing critics

When the Cricket compiled his list of movie critics who have lost their jobs in print publications in the last two years, he deliberately left Glenn Kenny of Premiere magazine off the list on a technicality: The magazine ceased publication in April 2007, but Kenny was still employed as senior editor for Premiere's web site.

Scratch that technicality.

Kenny is getting the boot from Premiere.com, as he announced on his blog today. He hopes to keep the blog going, and says he needs some free-lance work.

Labels: disappearing critics

The plight of film critics - and whether the declining numbers of critics in print publications are offset by the boom in do-it-yourself criticism online - was hashed out in a couple of forums yesterday.

On Wednesday's "Talk of the Nation" on NPR, The New York Times' A.O. Scott opined on the subject - along with Margo Mealey, who writes the blog DC Girl @ the Movies. A good conversation on the subject, but too brief.

Michael Ventre, writing for MSNBC.com, offers a perspective on the situation. Too bad that he begins with the old saw that it's all the fault of Siskel & Ebert - their darned thumbs having dumbed down film criticism to an either/or proposition that paved the way for aggregators like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes, where opinion is reduced to a number between 1 and 100.

But the most disturbing aspect of Ventre's article is the accompanying collection of comments from readers, who find movie critics to be elitist or preachy or (worst of all) unnecessary.

The biggest misconception about critics is that we don't actually like movies, and our criticisms somehow suck the joy out of moviegoing. For the Cricket, nothing could be further from the truth. If he didn't enjoy seeing movies, he'd hightail it into another line of work - preferably one that paid better. Most of the critics the Cricket knows got into this job because they love movies so much they had to share that experience through writing about them.

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Not sure whether to count this on the list of "the departed," because this one is walking out of his own volition: Film critic Matt Zoller Seitz, most recently writing for The New York Times but before that for New York Press, has decided to chuck it all and start making movies.

All this is detailed on Seitz' popular blog, The House Next Door, in a lengthy podcast (transcript included) with blog editor Keith Uhlich. Scroll far down into the comments, and you also learn that Nathan Lee - who was laid off by The Village Voice (and is No. 27 on the list of the departed) - will take over Seitz' spot at the Times.

Labels: disappearing critics

Yes, movie critics do land on their feet. Sometimes in fuzzy slippers.

Jami Bernard, who left her perch as the New York Daily News' movie critic two years ago when her contract wasn't renewed, was profiled in Crain's New York Business on Sunday - talking about her new career running her own home business, Barncat Publishing.

(Here's the story, from Jami's website - and a tip o' the hat to Movie City News. If you search for the story on Crain's website, one finds it's behind a paywall.)

And speaking of Movie City News, that's where Michael Wilmington, late of the Chicago Tribune, has found a new place to give his opinions. (Bernard had a blog there briefly after leaving the Daily News.)

Labels: disappearing critics

In recent columns about the demise of movie-critic jobs, both Daily Variety's Anne Thompson and the Los Angeles Times' Patrick Goldstein asked students at USC which critics they read.

Goldstein wrote that the entertainment-journalism students he met like to use web sites that post a consensus of critics, like Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.

Thompson said her film-criticism class at USC could name Roger Ebert, but that's it. They read Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly, but can't name the critics who write for those publications. And they visit Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, too.

The Cricket tried the same question on some University of Utah students last night, at an opinion-writing class taught by the Tribune's editorial-page editor Vern Anderson. The results were largely the same: Though one student mentioned Peter Travers at Rolling Stone and the New York Times' A.O. Scott, the others couldn't cite a critic by name who they read regularly. They also rely on the aggregators, though most of them had never heard of Rotten Tomatoes.

Goldstein summed up the situation best: "They do listen to critics, but largely as a group, not as individual brands. The age of the singular critical voice is ending - people prefer the wisdom of a community."

Labels: disappearing critics

With at least 28 print-publication movie critics losing their jobs in the last two years, those of us still employed are huddled around the virtual bonfire asking each other, "Why?"

Anne Thompson, deputy editor at Daily Variety, tackled the matter in her most recent column - and found part of the answer among her film-criticism students at USC. They read other critics, in magazines like Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly or from the Rotten Tomatoes website, but they don't know the names of the critics they read.

These students, who are film junkies, "can't name a working critic other than [Roger] Ebert, and that's thanks to his TV fame," Thompson writes.

So who do the kids listen to? "These students - and today's youth auds in general - more often get their movie info straight from the studio marketing departments, who couldn't be happier," Thompson writes. "These kids go to YouTube, Yahoo Movies and Apple to find trailers. As they surf the Web, bits of movie flotsam and visuals planted by the studios on MSN Movies or IGN or JoBlo eventually cross their eyeballs. But they also listen to their friends more than any authority figures, and distrust obvious studio hype."

Patrick Goldstein at the L.A. Times today ran through the list of usual suspects - it's the Web, or media downsizing, or media dumbing-down, or studios shutting out critics, or lousy critics making the rest of us look bad - before deciding "maybe it's time critics, like many artists, realize they should pay more attention to their audience." The source for Goldstein's revelation: Talking to his 9-year-old son about video games.

Goldstein's column brought out a stern rebuke from Movie City News' David Poland on his Hot Blog. Poland discounts Goldstein's thesis that movie critics have ever had influence over the mass of moviegoers. The influence of Pauline Kael (to which all movie critics are supposed to genuflect) was with New York arthouse audiences and the marketing people who pay attention to those audiences, Poland argues.

"It's not about pandering or figuring out what people really want... any more in journalism than in the movie business," Poland writes. "People who lead strongly end up with followers. People who ask 9 year olds why they don't trust critics in the LA Times are very, very confused."

Labels: disappearing critics

Some reaction to yesterday's blog post listing the movie critics who have left their jobs - some jumping, some pushed - in the last two years:

-- Alex Klenert, vice president of publicity at ThinkFilm, e-mailed with three more names (which the Cricket will add once he confirms how and when they left their jobs). That executives at a distributor are keeping tabs on this stuff raises an interesting point, one David Carr made in his New York Times story on Tuesday: That indie distributors are losing business because there are fewer critics around (especially in the New York market) to champion little movies that don't have the big marketing bucks.

-- Jeffrey Wells linked to the list from his Hollywood Elsewhere blog, but with a mildly snarky attitude (a natural for Wells) suggesting this is just the last bubbles from the tar pit as we print-media dinosaurs sink into oblivion. This may be true, but some of us are learning to adapt - and, for now, the critics with a publication behind them still have more credibility than most (not all) web-based critics.

Labels: disappearing critics

Movie critics who write for print publications are "on the endangered species list," proclaimed a headline in The New York Times on Tuesday.

To which the Movie Cricket replies, "Welcome to the party, folks."

The Cricket has been writing about this particular issue for awhile, and he is happy that the New York media - whose collective sun rises and sets in their own navels - is realizing that it's happening to them, too.

As his contribution to the discussion, the Cricket has been compiling a list of the movie critics who have lost their jobs - to retirement, layoffs, buyouts or reassignments - in the last two years.

In compiling the list, the Cricket did not include critics who died over that period (a list that includes "Good Morning America's" Joel Siegel and the Arizona Republic's Bill Muller) or critics whose print publications were shot out from under them (e.g., Glenn Kenny, who continues at Premiere.com now that Premiere magazine has folded).

The Cricket expresses gratitude to the critics he asked to peruse the list and suggest additions. But the list is by no means complete, and the Cricket welcomes any and all comments on who should be included (or excluded).

Here, then, is the list of movie critics who have left or are leaving their jobs:

1. Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, buyout, 2006
2. Steve Ramos, Cincinnati CityBeat, position eliminated, April 2006
3. Jami Bernard, New York Daily News, contract not renewed, May 2006
4. Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News, buyout, fall 2006
5. Dennis Lim, Village Voice, laid off, October 2006
6. Michael Atkinson, Village Voice, laid off, October 2006
7. Mark Burger, Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal, laid off, November 2006
8. Barbara Lester, CityLink (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.), position eliminated, early 2007
9. Bob Ross, Tampa Tribune, laid off, April 2007
10. Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News, buyout, May 2007
11. Phoebe Flowers, South Florida Sun-Sentinel, reassigned, May 2007
12. Dave Gathman, Elgin (Ill.) Courier-News, staff reorganization, May 2007
13. Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, buyout, summer 2007
14. Jack Garner, Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle, retired, June 2007
15. Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune, quit, July 2007
16. Rob Nelson, City Pages (Minneapolis-St. Paul), position eliminated, August 2007
17. Matt Soergel, Florida Times-Union, reassigned, October 2007
18. Terry Lawson, Detroit Free Press, buyout, December 2007
19. Jack Mathews, New York Daily News, retired, December 2007
20. Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader, retired, December 2007
21. Ed Bradley, Flint (Mich.) Journal, buyout, January 2008
22. David Elliott, San Diego Union-Tribune, laid off, January 2008
23. Jan Stuart, Newsday, buyout, March 2008
24. Gene Seymour, Newsday, buyout, March 2008
25. Bruce Newman, San Jose Mercury News, reassigned, March 2008
26. Mary F. Pols, Contra Costa Times/Oakland Tribune, buyout, March 2008
27. Nathan Lee, Village Voice, laid off, March 2008
28. David Ansen, Newsweek, buyout, March 2008

UPDATE (Thursday): Two names - a sports columnist and an editor - were put on the list in error, and have been deleted. Mark Burger, formerly of the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal, has been added. More names have been submitted, and will be added once confirmed.

UPDATE (Friday): Two more confirmed names for the list: Barbara Lester at CityLink (a Fort Lauderdale alt-weekly run by the Sun-Sentinel) and Ed Bradley at the Flint (Mich.) Journal.

Labels: disappearing critics

The New York Times today noticed what the Cricket and others have been warning about for some time: The movie critic in print is "now on the endangered species list."

Reporter David Carr - acting in his daytime persona, rather than his secret identity as The Carpetbagger - took note of three recent personnel moves in New York (the layoff of the Village Voice's Nathan Lee, buyouts at Newsday that included critics Jan Stuart and Gene Seymour, and a buyout at Newsweek that included critic David Ansen) and concluded things are tough all over.

If there's one rule at The New York Times, it's that if things are happening in New York, they must be happening everywhere. Of course, it already is happening everywhere: In the last two years, critics at papers in Tampa, Ft. Lauderdale, Denver, Dallas, Atlanta and San Jose (just a name a few cities) have either retired (often with a managerial nudge), been laid off, taken buyouts or been reassigned.

And why should you, the moviegoer, care if a bunch of 40ish-and-older journalists are losing their jobs when there are movie blogs, as Carr puts it, "strewn about the Web like popcorn on a theater floor"?

Carr quotes movie producers and distributors who argue that, without critics, a lot of intelligent and award-worthy movies wouldn't get the attention they deserve.

"For those of us who are making work that requires a kind of intellectual conversation," said producer Scott Rudin, "we rely on that talk to do the work of getting people interested." Rudin should know - two of the movies he produced last year were the Oscar winners "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood."

Labels: disappearing critics

Last week, after the Village Voice's Nathan Lee was laid off, S.T. VanAirsdale of The Reeler joked about the shrinking membership of the New York critical community.

"If this keeps up, who will compose the New York Film Critics Circle?" VanAirsdale wrote. "At this rate, it'll be Armond White splitting the Jim Hoberman and Rex Reed votes, with 'Indiana Jones 4' ekeing out a narrow Best Picture victory come December."

VanAirsdale may not be kidding. Another lion among New York's movie critics is hanging it up: David Ansen, Newsweek's main movie critic since 1977, is among 111 of the newsmagazine's staffers - in the news and business departments - who have accepted a buyout, according to Radar Online.

Anne Thompson at Daily Variety reports that Ansen found Newsweek's offer too good to pass up. He'll continue until year's end, then take a one-year contract as a contributor - reviewing occasionally and writing longer features. He also plans to teach and write books.

Labels: disappearing critics

The Village Voice has laid off movie critic Nathan Lee, for "economic reasons" according to the e-mail Lee sent around to friends (and wound up on S.T. VanAirsdale's The Reeler blog).

"I am, as they say, 'looking for work,' though presumably not as a staff film critic as such jobs no longer appear to exist," Lee writes in his e-mail.

Good luck, Nathan. Newsday just gave buyouts to its three-member movie crew, and the Cricket recently counted about 20 critics who have either taken buyouts, retired or been laid off in the last two years.

Labels: disappearing critics

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.

Labels: disappearing critics

"Foreman says these jobs are going, boys, and they're not coming back."

The rationale papers make is that money's tight, critics are a luxury, most critics have been around for years (and draw bigger salaries because of their seniority), and there's plenty of movie criticism out there on the wires and the Internet.

The problem is that fewer critics mean fewer voices, fewer champions for smaller movies that don't have ten tons of studio marketing behind them. Fewer critics, especially regional critics, mean the voices of New York and Los Angeles critics get disproportionally louder - which means regional filmmakers (like Jay Craven in Vermont, Victor Nunez in Florida, Richard Dutcher in Utah or the up-and-comers in Austin) never get the critical appraisal they need.

Labels: disappearing critics

In the last year or so, movie critics at the Chicago Tribune, Rocky Mountain News, Dallas Morning News, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Akron Beacon Journal, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Tampa Tribune and other papers have left their jobs - either through retirement, buyouts or staff re-organization.

Here's another one: Matt Soergel, for nearly 14 years of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville, is being reassigned. (Here's his farewell column, which includes a friendly dig at Real Salt Lake.)

"The reasoning goes: Film reviews are available through wire services, and local news isn't. So the film critic goes," Soergel writes.

Of course, the problem is that if every paper goes that way, then every paper in America - from Florida to California, from Utah to Minnesota - will be running the same reviews, either from Roger Ebert or The New York Times or the Associated Press. Hundreds of voices engaged in a dialogue will be reduced to a handful of experts talking in a vacuum, and the quality of film criticism and the films themselves will suffer for it.

More voices means more champions for unusual movies, and more chances for those movies to catch on with audiences. And regional movie critics can speak up for their readership in ways that a nationally-known critic can’t.

Labels: disappearing critics

Bill Muller, film critic for The Arizona Republic, died Thursday after a yearlong battle with cancer. He was 42.

His paper posted this obituary, filled with fond remembrances. Sounds like to know him was to love him.

Labels: disappearing critics