Premiere Shuts Down: Does it Spell the Beginning of the End for Long-Form Movie Writing?
Filed under: Newsstand, Obits, Cinematical Indie
Over at Variety, Anne Thompson wrote an excellent piece yesterday on Premiere Magazine ceasing publication, and how it's getting harder and harder to find places to publish long-form movie journalism. Space for writing of any decent length about film has all but disappeared from most mainstream print publications, and the proliferation of movie writing on the Web has made it harder for print pubs about movies to continue to exist, Thompson says. Part of the issue is that readers who have grown accustomed to the tendency on websites and blogs to write shorter posts with less commentary have less interest in (and patience for reading) longer, more thoughtful pieces about film.
Here at Cinematical, we have always supported longer reviews than readers will typically find at places like People or Newsweek, where real estate for more in-depth film coverage is hard to come by. Our regular reviews tend to run around 1,000 words, with fest reviews typically clocking in around the 500-750 word range. This gives our writers a lot more room to delve into things like the history of a genre as it relates to a given film, or to compare a particular film with previous works by the same director, or even to just talk about things like how the editing or cinematography or production design affect the film overall.
Although we do occasionally get readers who complain about reviews here being too "long-winded," for the most part our audience has seemed to appreciate the longer takes on films, because we're able to convey more about what we really think about the film any why than we could within a 250-word blurb that gives you little room to expand on why we like a film or hate it. I don't see the demise of Premiere as the end of the film-journo world as we know it, so much as it heralds a shift away from print media and more onto online media as a means of distributing what film journalists write.
Premiere initially attemped to do an online version as a subscription service, but frankly, your average film buff just isn't going to pay for an online subscription when there's so much film info on other sites for free. The site is now operating as a leaner, meaner online pub (albeit no longer paying the $2 per word rate the print pub paid, Thompson notes), with plans to capitalize on Premiere's reputation and brand in building a strong website that's a regular resource for film fans. Other ex-Premiere staffers are migrating to various online publications as well, but I bet for the most part they're finding it hard to find online film journalism work that pays even close to what they're used in in the print media world.
So what do you think? Do you care if print publications no longer publish longer pieces about film, or are you already getting your information about the film world online?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-06-2007 @ 8:24PM
stonemonkey45 said...
Well we still have print magazines in the UK, but I have to admit I don't buy them very often, the fact is for the most part its old news (When you subscribe to RSS feeds) and they often adopt a "web style" of writing anyway. It always surprises me the amount of "film reviews" linked to from Rotten Tomatoes with their vaunted "Professional" critics that are indeed just "a 250-word blurb". When you look at some of the most popular movie websites and blogs, while their niche may be film, what many of them are really doing is just acting as hype sites, exclusive this and that and ooh this will rock, but they don't really seem to have an interest really dissecting or discussing film and those sites that do are constantly subject to comments from people who don't understand that film is subjective or why they are not just joining in the hype.
Just look at your guest review from Nick Schager of slant magazine of “Grindhouse”, because he has not written "WOW this was so awesome dude, I shit my pants, this film totally rocked" people are complaining that he actually wrote about the film itself. While there will always be a market for people who enjoy good “midbrow” (i.e. interesting, but not high end film “SA” reviews and not low brow "It rocks and has titties”) I think that pool of people is shrinking as more and more people just want film critics to confirm they are watching the "Cool" films and not to go against the grain and actually "critique" the films they watch. In some ways though to succeed maybe you have to “Give the people what they want” and if 250 words confirming the “awesomeness” of 300 is what they want and you need to get paid then maybe that is the future of popular film writing.
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4-07-2007 @ 12:27AM
Mark said...
That's a shame. Premire used to be one of my favorite mags. Even in the world today, there should always be a place for print. To sit down and read and understand.
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4-07-2007 @ 5:54AM
GhaleonQ said...
For the United States' film journalism, it certainly does, but academic and international print documents will persist and be more worthwhile than anything else in the field.
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4-07-2007 @ 8:07AM
Mel said...
I frequently read Ebert's reviews just for fun. I find that he delves into film quite emotionally.
As much as I like Slant's Schager and Gonzales, I find that they are too detached from the films they are reviewing, replacing insight with forcefulness.
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4-13-2007 @ 8:54PM
M Rouda said...
I believe that the major problem here is in the absence of cause. If our cause, collectively if I may dream, is to press the issues of film education and culture ahead as a national agenda, and to consider films as a tool of culture and as an essential art as well, not ONLY as entertainment, we wouldn’t have lost Premiere. We lost it because we liked it as news factory. Since the are hundreds of such factories on the internet, we simply stopped needing it. Premiere magazine, mind you, was not that keen on film culture, not like “Sight and Sound” in UK or Film Comment and Cineaste in USA or Positive in France. These magazine are set for the serious reader and the serious writer. My fear is to wake up one day and see that our neglect of understanding cinema as art and as a reflection of our human concerns have led to losing these magazines (or any other publication of the same genre).
I’m in the middle of the middle class. I need, like the majority of us, every penny I can save. More than that, I don’t own a house or a shop or any kind of business. I don’t even have a health insurance. I live, financially speaking, exactly on what I earn as a film critic. Yet, though I can read these magazines on the internet for free (well sort of free), I make sure I go out and buy every issue of every single one of them, because I want them to continue and because I want to play a positive role in resisting whatever unhealthy changes we –as people everywhere- are going through. I want to believe that good quality times is a matter of a personal choice.
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