A reader asks:
Have you written about the state of music criticism in major daily newspapers? The realization becomes stronger with every review that I read, especially of those specific concerts that I attend, that the “music critics” [of my local newspaper] are not critics, but occasional reviewers and mainly typists. One in particular writes like an adolescent. How does he get away with it? He writes as if he has no editor. He is condescending, limited, contradictory and flatulent with zircon-encrusted notions about relative value/new music/warhorse programming and other phony issues. He does not know much and it seems that whatever editor he has knows even less.
Is this the case in most cities? I mainly read the New York Times and do find individual writer bias. But the quality of writing is much higher than in —–. Please review the reviewers some time. Maybe I am out of touch and what I read in —– is as good as it gets. But I am disappointed that the newspapers get away with pretending that their coverage is real or useful. If you have a comment, please relay it.
I edited out the name of the city in question because I’ve never read the work of the critics to whom my correspondent refers. In any case, much the same thing could easily be said of countless other provincial arts critics. It’s a chronic problem, one that will never be cured, though it can be ameliorated to some extent, at least for a time.
My correspondent puts his finger on one part of the problem when he remarks of a particular critic that “whatever editor he has knows even less.” Of course there are any number of honorable exceptions–I wouldn’t care to tell you how often my own editors have saved me from dumb blunders–but given the way newspapers operate, it’s inevitable that many, perhaps most of their arts critics will usually be hired and supervised by editors who simply don’t know what they’re writing about.
What to do? I blogged
about the problem of incompetent critics a year ago, and offered this partial solution:
It’s not a popular view among my colleagues, but I think most of the best critics–not all, but most–have had at least some professional experience in at least one of the arts about which they write. I know I try to write not as a lofty figure from on high, smashing stone tablets over the heads of ballerinas and prima donnas, but as someone who has spent his entire adult life immersed in the world of art, both as a critic and as a practitioner. I was also fortunate to have served my apprenticeship as a critic in a middle-sized city, because it taught me that criticism is not written in a vacuum. It touches real people, people of flesh and blood, and sometimes it hurts them. If you don’t know that–and I mean really know it–you shouldn’t be a critic. And you’re more likely to know it when you’ve lived and worked in a city small enough that there’s a better-than-even chance of your meeting the people you write about at intermission.
Unfortunately, such critics are rarely content to stay in the middle-sized cities where they’re so desperately needed. Instead, they get pulled up the food chain to big-city papers, leaving their former readers bereft.
So is there an alternative to bad newspaper criticism? Of course–and you’re looking at it. Those who know better than the maladroit critics of their hometown papers should put their money where their mouths are and start arts blogs. I’ll tell you a little secret: newspaper editors and publishers are incredibly thin-skinned, so much so that they’ll do anything to avoid answering their detractors, at least in public. But the recent experience of media-savvy political blogs suggests that an alert, aggressive, well-informed blogger with patience and determination can make a difference, and I think that’s no less true when it comes to the arts. Even if you don’t persuade the local paper to hire a better critic, you’ll have created an alternative voice, one that might in time become important and influential. Believe me, stranger things have happened in the blogosphere.