A Tough Profession

Criticism, that is. At least criticism for print outlets, if you still cherish the hope of earning a living out of it. It's hard to know what to make of the recent onslaught of firings and buyouts and forced transformations of staffers into freelancers. (See here for my musings in my own blog on Deborah Jowitt, the recently so transformed dance critic of the Village Voice.)

Yes, one can pin one's long-range hopes on the web, but that doesn't pay the rent today. One possible result of all this will be the inexorable evolution, or devolution, of criticism from a profession into an avocation. The old connotations of the word "amateur," meaning a lover of the arts, or a gentleman lover of the arts, will be reborn.

Perhaps this will have the advantage of winnowing the field to true arts lovers, as opposed to careerists. All kinds of people seem to find the time to post their thoughts on the web, without being limited to well-off idlers. Yet the class implications of this transition are disturbing. If the rich have the most time and energy to blog, then our view of the arts will be skewed. Or criticism will become the preserve of geriatric retirees. I speak from knowledge on all these points.

Oh, well. The arts will survive, and so will criticism, but maybe in a form hard to recognize from the perspective of newspaper criticism as we have known it over the last century.