News-Record.com

John,
I guess you don't read the comments to your own blog. In response to your last post on this topic, Joe Killian perfectly summed up what you get when you rely entirely on wire reviews:

"Guys who write syndicated reviews are doing it in the most cookie-cutter, safe, never rock the boat or challenge the reader way possible. Which makes sense -- they know it's for mass consumption and that they need to give the most concise and least challenging reading of the film for people."

Do you think Roger Ebert or Pauline Kael would have developed their unique styles without a "home" where they could spend years building a rapport with their readers (and becoming major draws to their respective publications in the process, I should add)?

That's the reason why readers should want local movie criticism. Here's the reason why newspaper executives should want it in their pages: Because by giving your audience a generic product that they could literally get in hundreds of other places, you've given them one less reason to see your newspaper/Web site as indispensable.

Yes, even The New York Times could argue that having a film critic means one less body covering Brooklyn. And the argument could have been made 20 years ago when times were good. No one's had an unlimited newsroom, ever.

With such choices, a newspaper decides for itself whether it sits at the grownups' table. Until recently I could name several newspapers with less than 30,000 circulation that had a Washington correspondent and several newspapers with more than 100,000 circulation that didn't.

Having reporters who cover things outside the county line sends a message to readers and staff about how the newspaper perceives itself. And it sends a message about how the newspaper perceives its readers -- as sophisticated, demanding people that expect home cooking prepared just for them or an uncritical audience content to dine on the table scraps foraged from AP and more ambitious newspapers via syndication. The prestige factor isn't meaningless -- folks notice.

Based on your arguments against having local criticism, it appears that the N&R and other papers should do nothing more than have a single section reporting "news." No sports, no business, no religion, no lifestyle, no home and garden, no comics.
The cut, slice, prune, amputate measures being taken by editors like you is what is killing the newspaper business. If this was a murder investigation, you would be a prime suspect.

If he is doing is job correctly, a film critic does much more than just tell readers whether or not a particular movie is worth watching.

Good film critics serve their communities by sparking a dialogue about cinema and culture that exists outside of the studio-spun rhetoric of hype. But to do that well, there must be consistency. I know for a fact that this consistency is felt in Raleigh. There is seldom an occasion wherein I will watch foreign or independent film - both of which are almost dependent on film critics to get the word out - at the Rialto or Colony theaters in an empty auditorium. However, in the Triad, excellent titles like Standard Operating Procedure, Snow Angels, and Foot Fist Way play to empty houses. This is especially odd since the last two films I listed were made by graduates from NCSA. Of course, Roger Moore left this info out of the wire reviews that appeared in GoTriad, because he doesn’t write reviews for Greensboro. He writes them for mass consumption, oftentimes delivering a product that’s a lot like fast food: Impersonal, bland, and not very helpful to the people consume it.

By the way, there are a couple of great independent films coming to Greensboro in the weeks ahead:

- On August 1, we got “The Wackness,” a solid debut from writer-director Jonathan Levine about a Jewish marijuana dealer (Josh Peck) who befriends his psychologist (Ben Kinglsey). Sure, this has been said of other actors before, but as the film’s wayward protagonist, Peck has the charisma and naturalism of a young Brando. If you get a chance to see this film for yourself, you'll agree he is one to look out for in future roles.
Trailer here!

- What kinds of struggles do teens face in the new millennium? While TV news answers this question with all kinds of crazy responses, the new documentary American Teen (due August 15) shows that in many ways, the trials they face are the same ones we all faced when we were young – albeit with more technology. Director Nanette Burstein spent over a year filming in a Midwestern high school. The result was unparalleled access into the lives four high school teens (a jock, a prep, a nerd, and a weird girl), plus the best non-fiction movie of the year.
Trailer here!

One more thing: If you're using film reviews off the news wires, the person selecting those reviews likely is not an expert on film, but rather a generalist who also selects news-service book reviews, fried chicken recipes, etc. That means you likely will wind up running reviews only on the most mainstream movies because the selector's frame of reference isn't especially large. A specialist can think for himself and give the readers something unexpected once in a while.

It's probably not possible for smaller papers to have their own movie reviewers now -- particularly if reviewing movies is all the writer can do. Movie and theater beats have been combined, the trouble being that most movie reviewers have no little experience with theater and review plays like movies, often with unhappy results. Even that combination is fading as budgets dwindle. When you think about, marketing has probably killed off movie critics in small towns faster than anything else. Just about every paper has a Thursday or Friday entertainment tab now. You can argue that this serves readers by packaging the news and letting them plan their weekends, but it's also a spot where papers sell a lot of advertising. Friday is the day movies open, and reviewers outside very big cities don't get advance screenings a week or more ahead. They can't prepare reviews in time for the tab's Monday or Tuesday deadlines. No one wants to run a review a week after a movie has opened, especially now when the opening weekend take makes or breaks a film. Daily space being what it is these days, editors don't want to use their news holes for movie reviews the day after a movie opens either. With free wire reviews readily at hand, entertainment editors have turned to them and there appears to be no turning back. That said, it's important that those same editors use the best critics they can find and use the same ones regularly so readers know where they stand. Some wire and Internet film copy is terribly written by uninformed and unethical hacks who owe the movie business their livelihood (just read some movie ad blurbs), and that stuff is crowding out better critics now. Wire copy can seldom be tailored to a local market, except by a sharp-eyed, savvy editor who knows of local tie-ins. Most don't - and don't time to add it when they do.