Who Needs Critics Anyway?

Jon Fine of Businessweek jumps into the new media marketing world, where the studios are using web movie fans to promote movies. Another example of how the studios are bypassing professional critics. What does the future hold for film criticism? There's a huge hunger for information about new movies. But where and how do people want to get it? If you have the time, check out the endless debates on this subject: Andrew Horbal, Joe Morgenstern, Peter Suderman, Jeff Jarvis, Forbes.com, Dave Kehr, and AJ Schnack are among the many who have recently tackled this issue.

Comments

[Edward Copeland]

The pointless pursuit of young readers by newspapers is crazy. Aside from news junkies, young people seldom read the newspaper even before the Internet. Now, what point do they have for doing so? Newspapers should be aiming for the older demographic -- the ones with driveways where they can actually get the newspapers -- instead of trying to transform newspapers into People magazine, as if someone obsessed about the latest American Idol winner will pick up an issue promoting him or her and then return the next day to see what the city council did.

[Alan Green]

Anne

i read Andrew Horbal's piece, and he makes an eloquent and simple point: "There are a lot of talented film writers on the internet who are willing to work for free".

why then should the consumer pay for movie criticism? or, put another way, why would a newspaper, magazine, or website pay (a lot of) money for professional movie criticism when so many people are hitting quality movie blogs for free?

i think we can blame (or credit) the democratization of the internet for this trend. if you're a good writer and like movies, you can be a critic online without committing to a career as a journalist.

Horbal also cites Anthony Kaufman as saying on his blog: "blogs are helping to kill journalism." i think that's what happens when you give the public a voice - a small percentage will rise to the top and give the establishment a run for their money.

only in this case we're talking about a small percentage of every person with an internet connection who wants to say something about movies.

[David]

Pauline Kael noted years ago that without independent critics the only people speaking to the audience about movies are advertisors. Obviously that's what the studios want. They are acting out of ordinary venal self interest. The know-nothing editors and the "populist" critics are the ones who are committing treason.

[Michael Booth]

Ms. Thompson:
I'm a movie critic and entertainment writer for The Denver Post. I found your piece about the changing role of critics interesting until you forwarded, apparently without verification, Walter Chaw's claims about readership. I don't know the page-hit numbers for filmfreakcentral.net; I'd love to see those figures. What I do know is the print and web site circulation of The Denver Post, and to a lesser extent, our competitor the Rocky Mountain News.

In his interview with The House Next Door, Walter said this: "and taking into consideration that our "circulation" is more than three times the circulation of both Denver major daily papers combined"

Obviously "circulation" and "traffic" are tricky words these days, and can be interchanged for less-than-clarifying purposes. The daily circulation of The Denver Post is now 255,452. The Rocky's is 255,427. The Sunday circulation of The Denver Post is 704,806.

In January, the Denver Post web site had 14,483,113 page views and 2,174,987 unique visitors. The Rocky's web numbers are smaller, but still in the millions. The Denver Post alone typically gets 300,000 to 400,000 page views a day.

Again, I would love to see filmfreak's numbers, and understand how they figure they are "tripling" that. To support your paraphrase that his site sees "three times the traffic" of our print paper and our web sites, filmfreak would have to be getting at least 3.3 million web hits a day. Is that what they claim?

Technology changes and reading habits may indeed leave daily hacks like me without a job writing about movies. But accuracy about the state of journalism isn't enhanced by the unchallenged claims of disgruntled Internet critics.

Sincerely,

Michael Booth
The Denver Post
1560 Broadway
Denver, CO (303) 868-7972

[Anne Thompson]

Clearly this is Chaw's claim; I make that clear and changed the word traffic to circulation in the Risky column online.

[Alec]

It is simply not true that there are many talented film writers who are willing to work for free. The best sites maintained by professionals or even talented amateurs ask, beg, or cajole donations. Some have even gone under because of hundreds of comments like "I really love your stuff. Please keep writing, but please don't ask me to pay for it."

Even fan-obsessive devotional web sites go under because time is not free, unless you are living at home with your parents.

Still, although movie studios think that they might prefer getting rid of film critics, giving their marketing departments a big boost, they should keep in mind that extremely negative web reviews travel faster and often have a more immediate impact on the box office than print or TV reviews.

[Jim Verniere]

Anne, jay carr was and is a great champion of arthouse fare and i'm willing to accept tom bernard's assertion that there's a link between his departure and a dropoff in attendance. but bernard fails to take into account the january 2005 closing of loews copley place, boston's last arthouse in the city proper. many city dwellers i've heard from who saw art films at copley have stopped going because the landmark kendall square is in cambridge across the charles and requires two mbta trains and half mile hike to get to from many city neighborhoods. several of my neighbors in boston's south end tell me they just wait for the dvds now. amc is testing the waters with amc select at amc boston common on a few screens each week. let's hope they keep it up. i have been in contact
with several theater chains about this problem since copley closed. they all seem interested, but still no new arthouse in boston. it's a disgrace.
regards,
jim