The manner of the way the Independent on Sunday’s critics and arts writers came to know they were being swept away was bad enough.
One theatre critic heard from a colleague on another newspaper who was himself on holiday in the United States when he heard. But the decision that the arts are no longer to be an element of the paper’s coverage is inexplicable.
It comes in a year when we are celebrating the centenary of the Critics’ Circle, remembering the likes of Hannen Swaffer, James Agate, Harold Hobson, Kenneth Tynan and Jack Tinker, writers who had elevated theatre review to an artform in itself, and British arts writing has long led the world, in its depth of knowledge, deftness of language and understanding of artists’ processes. It still does.
The decision, apparently, is a simple cost-cutting move by the Russian owner of the IoS, the Independent and the Evening Standard, but it is also a kneejerk familiar in post-recession global industry: the tree must be preserved, so hack off the low-hanging fruit no matter what the consequences might be to the health of the plant.
What Evgeny Lebedev and his 27-year-old editor have failed to do is look beyond their spreadsheets. They haven’t discussed the options with their journalists or readers, and the affected writers were allowed to discover their fate through twitter and gossip.
Arts criticism is at a crossroads
Because the truth is that our artists have never been as high profile as they are now, the arts have never been more popular with audiences, and audiences have never wanted informed and objective review more than they do today – the packed lecture theatre of the V&A in April to which the public came to hear critics talk about their work and their concerns in a whole day of discussion mediated by Paul Gambaccini and Mariella Fortsrup is testimony to the popular following there still is for arts criticism. The action might, we can only hope, be isolated, but it sends a message that a whole genre of journalism is not only expendable, it is not wanted. It is therefore a blow not only to the arts and to arts criticism, but even more to newspapers and the journalism that has led the world.
It cannot be denied, though, that arts criticism is at a crossroads in this centenary year. This is not the first scything of newspaper review, with column space being slashed and critics, almost always freelance, seeing a steep reduction in commissions. What has risen in contrast is the extent of online review, and while much of this is amateur, clumsy and potentially damaging to the perception of proper criticism, there is a growing degree of editorial control and responsibility beginning to have an effect on these online blogs (modesty prevents me from citing a paradigm of a publication in online arts journalism). The temptation by what might be called the old school of criticism is to dismiss the new media, and we do so at our peril. Review online is increasingly available, but it is important for it not to be confused with opinion, uninformed and unconsidered: good writing can and will survive here, and so can arts criticism.
The insidiousness of the IoS action is that it spreads a perception that proper arts criticism is not relevant. It has never been more so, and if dying newspapers cannot give our fine critics the oxygen and nourishment they need, the new media must maintain the belief that we need them.