The Critics Say...: 57 Theater Reviewers in New York and Beyond Discuss Their Craft and Its Future (36 page)

Charles Isherwood:
It’s a very dispiriting sign of the times. Part of you thinks, Why are these writers giving away for free what they deserve to be paid for? But the truth is that having a voice in the market is a form of currency in and of itself. That means you get free tickets. And if you’re somebody who loves theater, you want free tickets. And perhaps you think, I’ll do this for free for now. But when a job opens up somewhere down the road, if I’ve proven myself worthy, I will be hired. But I haven’t heard of any people going from writing for free to writing for pay. I’ve only heard about it going in the other direction.

Christine Dolen:
I think it’s good that there are many people writing about theater, but how do they put food on their table if they’re not being paid?

David Cote:
I don’t think that being paid is the be-all and end-all, but I don’t know how long someone can sustain going to the theater and writing reviews without getting paid for it. Some bloggers do it for free tickets, and that is certainly an incentive, but I think the larger question is whether anyone is editing them. If they can’t be paid, then I would assume that no one is being paid to edit their work, so the quality of their writing might be terrible. I need to be edited. If the freelance critic isn’t being paid, and the editor isn’t being paid, then you are pumping a poorly written opinion into the cultural atmosphere, and I don’t know if that helps anyone.

David Rooney:
One of the most outrageous things that happened to me since becoming a freelancer was getting a very long proposal email from CNN to write a piece for their website about Julie Taymor being fired from
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
. It was like, “We would love you to write 3,000 words by tomorrow.” It was the night when word got out that Julie Taymor was being pushed out of
Spider-Man
. I had been following the situation and writing various stories about it for the
Hollywood Reporter
. They offered me an editorial spot on the home page of CNN.

It was apparently a column space that had been taken in the past by Denzel Washington, Teresa Heinz Kerry, and Ariel Dorfman. Every person named in this email that had written a guest editorial for this spot either had gazillions in movie money, obscene amounts of personal wealth, or a stream of arts grants. At the very end of this email, they wrote, “Unfortunately, this is an unpaid assignment.” They went on to explain that it would be great exposure, and that I’d be free to link to any blog or other project I was working on. They reminded me that the site reached 40 million readers a month, and that the piece would be on the CNN homepage for three or four days.

I declined—and not very politely. I think it’s outrageous that CNN is putting out feelers to freelance journalists, essentially saying, “Give us your expertise, your knowledge, and your insight into this situation. Write a compelling narrative that consumers will want to read. But we can’t pay you for it, even though we have 40 million readers a month.” If you have 40 million readers a month, you have advertising revenue.

I understand the challenges of monetizing content on the Internet, and I understand from experience at different publications how hard it is to translate those old print dollars into Web dollars. But it doesn’t help anyone that this Arianna Huffington/Tina Brown mentality of not providing adequate compensation for content has taken hold. I think that is the biggest threat to the survival of the theater critic and any other arts critic.

Alec Baldwin can write as many editorials for the
Huffington Post
as he wants. He has buckets of
30 Rock
cash. We don’t all have that. And I think it’s extremely rude that publications think that it’s fine to reach out to freelancers and offer zero compensation or insultingly low fees. Likewise, we are asked to talk on panels and moderate events and things like that, and it’s shocking how many organizations expect you to do that for free, without an honorarium of any kind.

We have worked and studied and toiled away to build up a body of knowledge. We should be compensated in some way to share that. It’s also up to theater critics to grow a pair and demand payment. They should stop accepting unpaid work. It’s fine for people to think that they’ve got to keep your names out there and keep their bylines visible. And if doing gratis work for the
Huffington Post
is the only way to do that, then fine. I guess there’s logic to it. But I also think it’s damaging in the long run. People who have worked hard to build a reputation and gain the trust of their readership should place value on their work. I don’t think giving up your writing for free is a way to place value on it.

Zachary Stewart:
This is not very different from what is going on in other branches of the arts and media. If one has to commit to two years of slave labor (i.e. internship) to get a job at a professional theater or newspaper, our theater and journalism will only come from the children of the very wealthy, who can afford to survive without working for a living. As a result, the perspective of the theater (and the criticism around it) will be increasingly limited.

Don Aucoin:
Any way that you can get your voice out there is legitimate, but the broader question is whether I’m bothered by the number of writers who are expected to work for free. That is pernicious. Writers should be paid for their work. But in terms of launching their careers, these days, young writers have to bring readers with them. They need to have a strong presence on social media. That way, they can go to a publication and say, “If you hire me, I will bring these readers with me.” That’s a big change. It used to be that you got readers by climbing aboard the mother ship.

Elisabeth Vincentelli:
Writing for the
Huffington Post
is pure exploitation. I find it a little presumptuous and ridiculous to ask someone to write for free. How am I going to pay my rent? Nobody wants to work for free. You work and you get paid. That’s a basic tenet of capitalism. I find it sadly ironic to see how working for free has become such a key element of the new economy: more for the few, less for the many.

Gordon Cox:
I think there’s something healthy and good about people who pay enough attention to the theater that they want to write about it for free.

Helen Shaw:
You can’t make a living as a freelance writer. And even if you are writing for money, those prices are going down because there are people that will do it for free. It’s just a product of reality. It darkens the landscape. But I would never tell somebody who’s writing on a blog or contributing to the
Huffington Post
that they should not be doing it, partially because you have to write so much to become good at this. I’ve been writing for a decade, and I don’t know if I’m any good at it. But I wouldn’t write for free. I know that about myself.

Jeremy Gerard:
I deeply believe in journalism that people have to pay for. I hope nobody takes seriously the adage that “information wants to be free.”

Jesse Oxfeld:
I don’t think it’s problematic. If they want to do it for free, and if they can afford to do it for free, good for them. I’m not interested in writing reviews for free just so I can write reviews. Samuel Johnson said, “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” It’s a job, and I don’t feel the need to do it for free for the
Huffington Post
.

Leonard Jacobs:
It’s very disconcerting that people are writing for free. When the
Huffington Post
gets bought by AOL for $300 million, but the thousands of people who wrote for Arianna Huffington for free get nothing, it goes beyond a level of disconcerting to nauseating, appalling, saddening, disappointing, and infuriating. It’s not ethical. It’s not moral. It’s not right. But from an economic point of view, it’s understandable. There is so much supply and far too little demand. Therefore, the price comes down.

Michael Musto:
Hiring writers without paying them subverts the whole industry. A lot of people unknowingly become scabs in a way that makes it easier for paid critics to be either fired or diminished in some way. To me, that’s a very bittersweet development. Who knew that there was a whole population of people that would gladly write for nothing? A lot of them are really decent writers, too. It’s a wrench in the whole business of being a critic, and I don’t see any way to slow that down.

Peter Filichia:
My feeling about money is that I am like the American Museum of Natural History: pay what you wish, but you must pay something. I will not write for nothing, but I will write for almost nothing because I like to write and get my opinions out there.

Richard Ouzounian:
Being a theater critic is a job, and you should get paid for it. My paper pays its freelancers very decently. I recently heard that a paper was using an intern over the summer to write reviews for free, and it’s a big, reputable paper. I don’t think that’s right.

Richard Zoglin:
I guess you have to do what you have to do to stay in the field. I am getting less money now than I did before because they’re cutting back, but I wouldn’t write for free.

Roma Torre:
Why do people take issue with that? Do they think it’s making it difficult for other people to make a living at it? We’re all poorly paid. But some pay versus no pay? I think they’re being taken advantage of, but I have nothing against critics who are doing it without pay. My complaint would be with the employers who don’t see fit to give them a decent wage.

Steven Suskin:
I hope most of our group is still getting paid. Critics who love the theater want to keep going to shows, but there are some critics who can’t afford to do it without getting paid. If they have another job, which a lot of critics do, they can keep going.

Adam Feldman:
It’s terribly disconcerting. I think it leads to a deprofessionalization of the profession. It creates a circumstance in which fewer of the best people are going to want to go into it because it does not pay. It will only attract people who are doing it as a labor of love. There’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s somewhat different from the job of a professional critic, and it usually means less editorial oversight and fewer ethical guidelines.

John Lahr:
It’s the way of the world. A critic is a person who has a job. And if you don’t have a job, you’re not a critic. So if you have to, you make your own job. If people really want to go to the theater every night and write what they think, that’s great. I wish everybody could get paid a living wage for it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. A few of my friends are writing without pay. I’m lucky to have other strings to my bow. To have had the
New Yorker
job for 21 years was an amazing gift, for which I am terrifically grateful. But when it’s over, it’s over. The caravan moves on.

Marilyn Stasio:
We live in a commercial world. If you’re paid to write, it means you’re valued. We deal in money. If you work for free, you’re not valued. I remember when a friend of mine, who was a really good critic for an important publication, got fired. The
Huffington Post
people asked if he wanted to write for them. He said, “Sure, what’s the deal?” They said, “No deal. We’re just giving you an outlet.” Excuse me? It’s humiliating to think that you’re expected to write for nothing.

Michael Riedel:
No one is entitled to a living. There’s no law that everyone should be paid for doing what they want to do. And if they want to write reviews for free, there are places like the
Huffington Post
that’ll happily take them. Personally, I would never write a word without being paid for it, but that’s just the generation I’m from. I’d much rather be doing other things than writing for the
Huffington Post
for no money. A lot of people writing for places like the
Huffington Post
are doing it for payment of a sort. They’re doing it because they want the free tickets. They don’t want to pay for their tickets, so they’re complicit in this.

David Finkle:
I have mixed feelings over this, and I thought about it when I started to write for the
Huffington Post
. I don’t like the idea that people are writing without being paid, but I weighed that against the site’s readership and where I am in my life. I’ve reached a point where I can afford to do it. I worked for a long time to get to this point. I do think they’re taking advantage of people, and I hold out the hope that they will change their policy. When I used to appear in comedy clubs as part of an act, the clubs didn’t pay, but now they do, so it’s possible that things will change.

Robert Feldberg:
There have always been people who love the theater so much that they’ll do things for very little pay or no pay at all. You have to pay somebody to cover a city council meeting because nobody’s going to do that for pleasure. It’s just the nature of things.

Ronni Reich:
It can cheapen the craft when people do all of this work without compensation. I’ll see job postings that say “free tickets as payment.” That’s not payment. That needs to be understood and taken seriously.

Terry Teachout:
Amateur writing about theater—and I don’t use the word amateur pejoratively—can be of the highest possible quality. I’m not knocking it in any way. But if you want to do anything really well, you have to do it a lot. If it can’t be your job, if that’s not an option, you’re not going to be able to make the commitment of time and energy that makes for a more informed critic. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to have good theater criticism, but it does put a tremendous obstacle in the road to having good criticism, particularly out in the regions and medium-sized cities where criticism has always been a little dicey. There is no good substitute for being able to work full-time, immerse yourself in the theater world, and practice seeing shows and writing about them.

Jason Zinoman:
On a macro level, it is a problem, but I have trouble judging people on that. You can’t control the macroeconomic situation. You need to look out for yourself. When you start your career, you have to get published. I reached a point fairly early in my career where I said, “I’m not going to write for free.” But I don’t want to sound like some old codger. The reality is that times have changed. There are far fewer places that pay. It’s true that I’ve done some jobs that pay less money, or that pay almost nothing, in order to reach more people, and that’s essentially the same kind of decision that young people are making. I would put the responsibility on the shoulders of the institutions, and not the people struggling inside of them.