Originally published in Countryside Post, Issue 2.4.
I’ve had to put off some people who have offered to write reviews for the Post—movie reviews, book reviews; you name it, they want to write what they think of it, and I don’t want to print it.
I don’t care for reviews. I find most of them useless; the only way I can tell whether I’d like a book or movie is by watching it. Few have the same criteria for picking entertainment anyway. We’re all entertained by different things. The only use for reviewers I have is that they tell me what something’s about, and I can get that from the advertisements.
That aside, the reason the Post doesn’t do reviews is that the Post covers local stuff, and most reviews are not of local things. The Prince of Egypt, fr’instance, is a nationally-distributed movie and is therefore not local; besides, it’s been out a month, and if you haven’t seen it by now, you’re waiting for the video.
Okay, so what about reviewing local things? I don’t want to print them either. Let’s say a local school puts on a play and it stinks. (I could tell you about one school musical that was inflicted upon me when I was working in Dixon, but I don’t want to relive the horror.) Chances are they’ve put in a lot of time and effort, as have their parents, and the last thing they need is some snot-nose bad-mouthing them in the paper. The Post is here to support the community, not trash it if it offends our sense of aesthetics.
Some have accused me of trying to “please everybody” with that stance. I doubt I am. None of the would-be reviewers are too pleased about it. But perhaps it’ll encourage them to write some stories of their own instead of critiquing the stories of others. Perhaps they’ll find out how easy it ain’t.
As always: If you have a story, you also have a paper to put it into. Call me.
—Kent Leslie, managing editor
Update, 9/16/2010. Back when I was editor of the Solano Community College Tempest, one of the writers had gone to a school-sponsored performance. I don’t remember what specifically it was; I think it was a dance troupe or something. The writer hadn’t cared for the show, and said so, as is his right as an American, and we printed it.
The instructor who had directed the show was furious, and wrote a rebuttal, as is his right as an American. His argument was that the Tempest was a school paper, and as such ought to promote school performances, not tear them down.
I didn’t care for his argument at the time. Still don’t. I saw it as more self-serving than school-serving. The school wasn’t really served if it put together pieces of crap and called them “performances,” and nobody ever called them on the fact that they could’ve done better or tried harder.
But let’s be fair: Frequently the job of a critic is a bit self-serving too. I’ve worked with a lot of writers, and most of them would love to write a weekly column, or be the guy who writes the movie reviews, the album reviews, the TV reviews, and so forth. I’ll tell you another time about how I handled reviewers on other newspapers, but suffice to say that some of them do a great job, but most of them are lazy writers who just want to passively watch a show, say “I like it” or “I don’t like it,” and be admired or feared for minimal effort. Most of the people who have volunteered to be critics for my newspapers were just that sort of writer: the sort I could do without.
And some of them were video store owners who wanted to give three stars or more to every movie they stocked. Or book fans who only wanted to read their favorite authors, then toss out positive reviews of them, naturally. Or movie fans who figured being a reviewer would get you free tickets to the theater, right? (Sure, if we had a budget for theater tickets. But we didn’t. And finagling free tickets from the theater owners is unethical. Not that they didn’t try to abuse their “press passes.”)
Anyway, here’s where I get to the “one school musical that was inflicted upon me when I was working in Dixon.” I was on staff of The Dixon Newspaper and was given free tickets to see Dixon High School’s performance of Bye Bye Birdie, in the hopes that I would write something in the paper and thereby promote it. So I went. It was awful.
The leads were good. The boy playing Albert and the girl playing Rose were capable actors, and could carry a tune. But everyone else was mediocre at best. The boy playing Conrad Birdie—the one person in the play who should be able to sing—couldn’t. The choreography was uncoordinated. The singers were disharmonious. The lines were flatly given or inaudible. The evening went awfully slow, and when it was over, I ducked out of the theater quickly before anyone could ask me what I thought of it.
It occurred to me: This is a school play. These aren’t drama majors who are studying to get better at performing; these aren’t professional actors who should be expected to have some degree of ability; these are high school kids having some fun. It’s unfortunate that they were charging people good money for it, but the only people paying for it were their parents and schoolmates. I got in free. All a review would do is point out the obvious—that this was an amateur production, and nothing other than what you’d expect from high schoolers—and it would annoy the kids and parents and school for no good reason. The only real reason to write a review would be if it unexpectedly turned out to be brilliant. Otherwise, pretty much everyone would take it for granted that it sucked. I mean, it’s a high school musical. Only on TV are they ever any good.
So I didn’t write a review. I simply wrote up a brief little something about how Bye Bye Birdie was playing at
But at Countryside Post, I had a lot of folks who wanted to write reviews. Including some people who wanted to review some Bear River High School performances. And not very kindly. So, before we ever ran a first review, I put my foot down and said no reviews. Period. Don’t need ’em; don’t want ’em. Let’s dodge the bullet now.
It annoyed the video store owners—although they were quick to realize that they could run mini-reviews in their ads, though they never did rate any video below three stars. But still, it eliminated a lot of animosity that I would have got from angry high schoolers, their families, their teachers, and their boosters. The only animosity I got was from the would-be reviewers. Which I could live with.