The medium isn’t the message

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Is criticism an elitist profession? You bet it is. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

This afternoon, four cranky critics spoke on the ‘Critic’s Voice’ panel about their profession -- or rather the apparent demise of it. The speakers were Alex Ross of the New Yorker, Richard Schickel of Time, Albert Mobilio of Book Forum and author Nicholas Basbanes.

Inevitably, there was some of the doom and gloom that have become unavoidable when talking about the state of criticism today. But there was also a good deal of irascible contrarianism that made for a particularly lively discussion -- and offered a ray of hope for aspiring reviewers of all stripes.

In an online world glutted with opinionators, critics can cut through the white noise with the fine blade of expertise. ‘We spend our lives doing this,’ bellowed Schickel, who was in particularly fine (and boisterous) form. His argument boiled down to a simple point: Not all opinions are created equally -- e.g., the critic who spends his or her career thinking about literature usually has more valuable things to say than the anonymous Amazon power-user or random blogger.

There’s no question that critics have a bad rep -- we’re arrogant, out of touch, snobbish, crotchety. And of course, elitist. But aren’t those the traits we want in journalists? (And, yes, we critics are journalists despite what some people -- and editors -- would have you believe.) We serve our readers best by refusing to talk down to them, which is to say by challenging with difficult and sometimes unpopular points of view.

What will the critic of tomorrow look like? Will there even be critics? I think Alex Ross provides the best prototype: an expert in his domain (classical music) who writes for a high-ish-brow publication but who also maintains a blog. He is platform agnostic; it’s the ideas that count, not the medium.

The days of the public intellectual -- that’s what some of us critics like to call ourselves -- may be numbered, but as the panel participants said, it’s too early to say the profession is going the way of the dinosaur. Critics who can adapt will survive, which doesn’t necessarily mean selling out or dumbing down what we do. As Ross has demonstrated, even critics of marginal art forms can find mainstream success and new readers.

And if I can end with my own mini-thought: What’s lethal to criticism isn’t elitism or the Internet or a shortage of good art; it’s the critic’s own lack of optimism.

-- David Ng