No More Critics

Critics get in the way. While a piece of nasty criticism can be fun to read and an ecstatic piece celebrating a little-known title can boost its profile, the general sense among publications, producers, studios, etc. is “Who needs them?” The prevailing “wisdom” appears to be that there’s no more time or space for nuance, nor any value in having expertise. We see this filtering across all kinds of disciplines, from people playing amateur detective on Reddit, people “doing their own research” when it comes to vaccines, or believing that ChatGPT knows the answer to everything. So much information is coming at us that a confidently stated opinion apparently has more value than an informed opinion.

Last month, The New York Times reassigned four of its critics—television critic Margaret Lyons, music critic Jon Pareles, theater critic Jesse Green, and classical music critic Zach Woolfe—to new roles with a search for new critics to take over these beats. None of the aforementioned critics had performed poorly at their jobs, but the Times felt that their expertise and contributions were no longer performing well enough at whatever the Times felt they wanted. Culture editor Sia Michel’s explanation was, shall we say, less-than-convincing:

“We are in the midst of an extraordinary moment in American culture. New generations of artists and audiences are bypassing traditional institutions, smartphones have Balkanized fandoms even as they have made culture more widely accessible than ever, and arts institutions are facing challenges and looking for new opportunities…Our readers are hungry for trusted guides to help them make sense of this complicated landscape, not only through traditional reviews but also with essays, new story forms, videos and experimentation with other platforms,” she wrote in the memo. “Our mission is to be those guides,” she continued. “As we do so, I am making some changes in assignments in the department.”

Of course, these critics are already trusted guides (hence their continued employment at the Times), but reading between the lines of Michel’s memo is that they want younger people who do TikTok and Insta reels. That feels like a short-term tradeoff to grow social channels (which doesn’t necessarily lead to NYT subscribers) at the expense of expertise.

The hits kept coming with this week’s news that Vanity Fair was letting go of chief critic Richard Lawson and Hollywood correspondents David Canfield and Anthony Breznican. It’s one thing to scale back on Hollywood coverage, but it’s baffling to assume you can remain at the center of culture without a voice speaking about and to that culture. Take away people who provide insight into the industry and what it produces, and all you’re left with are celebrities in fancy clothes taking lie detector tests.

Similar to Michel, VF’s new editorial director, Mark Guiducci, is more concerned about future-proofing his publication without understanding the assets he has in the present, noting how he wants to be able to take the publication’s coverage and apply it to “modern ways, from newsletters to TikTok to new platforms that don’t yet exist.”

Sorry, Richard Lawson. Your criticism is thoughtful and compelling, but we need to prepare for Blorp. What if everyone is Blorping and we’re not a part of it? What then, Richard?

Even places that still value reviews are running into friction, if not from owners then from readers who fail to understand that criticism is part of a conversation, not a final verdict. Aftermath interviewed several writers (including my pals Rafael Motomayor and Siddhant Adlakha) about how much heat and fury they have to endure just to review an anime series for IGN:

“I have mixed feelings on numerical scores because I think on one hand they can be a representative shorthand of what someone feels about something that can be a helpful guide,” Adlakha said. “But I think the way it’s interpreted a lot of the time—whether it’s a score out of 10 or five stars on a film-centric website, I think people see that as the end-all of criticism. [Readers will] look at what the score is and not even read what you’ve written and treat it as an attempt at objectivity, and then they tend to clash with you on that.”

I’m grateful that IGN isn’t cutting them loose or choosing to abandon reviews altogether, but you can see how critics are now getting it from both sides, and weirdly, both management and readers seem to have come to one conclusion: we only want reassuring words, and we want them as quickly as possible.

Reality On Demand

The critic presents two problems for current outlets. The first is that a critic tends to provide long-form nuance, and the second is that they may issue an opinion that upsets readers, management, or both. While the second would seem to be fine in an age when “enragement is engagement,” the nuance removes the immediacy of the “hot take,” and so a mature, thoughtful outlook is now a barrier to the attention economy publications wish to dominate.

The future, as these entities would prefer it, is the influencer. The influencer traffics in the aesthetics of authenticity and relatability while earning their income as a salesperson. They’re consciously a part of a marketing machine, and the question becomes how many of their followers are aware of the deals being struck. No critic worth their salt can be bought with an early screening or a free t-shirt, but an influencer can. They know there’s a quid pro quo, and the question is whether they can get one over on their audience. The defense, of course, is that they’re just vocal fans. They don’t want to be known as “critics,” and why would they? Critics are losing their jobs and only have their integrity to show for it. Can’t pay your rent with integrity.

Readers may think they’re okay with this trade-off. “Critic” has never been the most popular job title, and for those who think that being a critic is just issuing a piece calling a piece of entertainment “good or “bad,” then it doesn’t make much sense to pay for that if the Internet has democratized the issuing of such opinions. But what you’re paying for isn’t the thumbs up or thumbs down. You’re paying for the expertise. I want to know that when I read a piece of criticism, even if I disagree with the conclusion, the critic has a firm understanding of history, themes, and ideas larger than “I liked it/I disliked it.”

But again, this gets in the way when everything is being reduced down to its simplest forms—the headline, the score, etc. How much room do you have for nuance in the infinite scroll of TikTok? You’ve got roughly a few seconds to win someone over, and if you’re not constantly entertaining, they’ll move on to someone else. That’s a system that doesn’t prize expertise but charisma. It prizes telegenic faces and confident statements. These people aren’t new (I’m reminded of Patton Oswalt’s bit about the movie critic on the local news who doesn’t like The Road Warrior but loves Three Men and a Baby), but there are just more of them now and they’re now the friendly conduit between a studio that wants to sell you something and your wallet.

This is a dead-end for everyone involved because in the future, there’s only going to be more things vying for entertainment (like Blorp!). I suppose this may lead to a useful payola system for publications and influencers where companies bid on positive coverage, but eventually the disconnect will arrive where readers and viewers wonder why they only receive enthusiastic notices regardless of what’s being sold. It doesn’t even have to be a movie or a TV show, or an album. We saw last year how influencers could be marshaled in a smear campaign against a celebrity. The bet is that algorithms can push you towards being a more willing participant in an upcoming purchase, not that you’re someone who can engage in critical thought. You cease being someone who engages with art and someone who can only consume it.

Because the Internet is, to quote Bo Burnham, “a little bit of everything all of the time,” there’s no room for nuance or deep knowledge. We only have so many hours in a day, and there’s a constant tidal wave of stuff heading towards us. How many TV shows and podcasts are in your backlog? How many books sit in a pile on your bedside table or movies are on your watchlist? A knowledgeable critic could help you sift through this material and enrich your understanding of it, but the Internet, as a bottomless pit, is built for quantity, not quality. You’re meant to ingest more, and that’s a problem to be solved not with the most insightful opinions, but the loudest, most charismatic people working to grab your attention in between all the other things vying for your attention. Moreover, these people are meant to flatter your sensibilities, providing an illusion of knowledge under the guise of “secret knowledge” or a hot take. Critics want to hit intellectual buttons, but social media, where these publications want to thrive, plays off emotional triggers.

Pivoting to Ignorance

As Time critic Stephanie Zacharek observed, the removal of critics is part of a larger war on expertise. We can see it not only in the arts and letters, but in medicine, economics, etc. Consider the popularity of Donald Trump, a man with no expertise, no curiosity, but plenty of opinions. Consider the success of Joe Rogan, a man who knows nothing but somehow manages to spend hours every day chatting about things he fails to grasp. The thinking goes that because we have access to loads of information and everyone has an opinion, you don’t need professional opinion-havers who aren’t issuing the hottest takes. What you need are strong views that will hold attention. Any expertise will only add nuance, thus diluting the power to drive engagement through emotional reaction.

However, this is emblematic of the short-term thinking that permeates so much of business today. It’s reactive in a way that not only misreads the public’s interest but also fails to account for how current trends may swing away from present attitudes. The thinking is that because we have a deluge of information, the loudest, snappiest voices are what people want. But the answer to noise isn’t more noise. It’s people who can cut through everything because they’re a human being with deep knowledge who understands how to speak to an audience.

The path to a devoted readership isn’t going to be through cheerful influencers who sell their smiles to the highest bidder, nor is it going to be to an AI model that scrapes together a bunch of other opinions without any assessment of their quality. It’s going to be people who build trust with readers. There will always be people who think the purpose of a critic is to either echo their opinion back at them or to do nothing more than Consumer Reports. But with so many movies, shows, books, and albums coming at us, publications need a greater reliance on sharp, critical thinkers, not less.

When publications like The New York Times and Vanity Fair behave this way towards their critics, it tells me they hold expertise cheap and that they’re willing to sacrifice thoughtful writers to chase a shiny bauble they don’t fully understand but might produce revenue at some point. Rather than pay a person who has spent decades honing their craft and learning about the world, NYT and VF think they can pay less money on an influencer or an algorithm and get a better outcome. Of course, I’m a critic, so I’m biased, but I haven’t found an influencer or an algorithm yet that could come close to rivaling a Richard Lawson or a Stephanie Zacharek.