Related: Part I

     Recently, three critics from The Providence Journal features department, Bill Gale, Vaughn Watson and Andy Smith, gathered with a group of staff members at the newspaper to talk about their jobs and to describe the difference between critical and newspaper writing. Critics, unlike reporters, are supposed to express their opinions. But that liberty also carries some heavy responsibilities. This is an edited version of the second portion of their talk.

     Question: Are critics also consumer reporters?
     Gale: You should not be consumer reporters but you are. When shows cost what shows cost these days it is inevitable that people are going to use you as consumer guides. When I know it is going to cost $60 a ticket, $100 a ticket, then that show has to be really good.
     Question: Would you be more critical of a show that costs $100 as opposed to a few dollars.
     Gale: Yeah. I do tend to be. Because I am a middle class Joe and I know what it takes to spend that kind of money. There are critics who say, 'absolutely not, it does not matter what it costs, you just write what you think.'
     One question that comes up is how sophisticated is the reader. That's the way you want it, you make a decision vis a vis what you think of the reviewer. But I don't know how many people get around to that. You know, they say, 'well that damn Gale, I've never liked anything he liked and therefore I know what I think about this.'
     Smith: I think there are different levels of sophistication and you have to be able to address all of those levels.
     Question: Does that mean that the opinion in a daily newspaper should be right up there at the top?
     Smith: I think it should be quite high. Not necessarily in the lead, but I would say before the jump.
     Gale: I was reading the New York Times today and he went on and on and on and finally somewhere in the jump I learned that he did not like it.
     Question: What if you hate a particular performer, such as Jimmy Buffett and you have to go and review his concert. What do you do?
     Gale: You have to go there and appreciate what Jimmy Buffett does. We once had a reviewer here, who no longer works here, who went and reviewed Liberace and panned Liberace. He said Liberace was terrible. Well, that's his subjective reaction. I don't think he understood what Liberace was trying to do. He's a great showman, and that's the level that you have to judge him on. You may hate it, but how does he do it? What was he trying to do, how does he do it?
     Watson: I would say that 50 to 60 percent of the people I am reviewing, I would not have gone to listen to their music. Many of them do music that I did not think that I cared for. What I am learning is that I try to isolate out specific parts of the show and just judge that against what this person can do. If I am going to listen to country, which I may not have listened to before, I can do that, regardless of what my preference for country is. I can listen to a particular artist and how that person is playing the guitar. And I can listen to another artist and how they are doing with the drum set. How does another person sound vocally. I can also consider whether this is pop art or whether there is a political social message. I do not think I necessarily have to be fan of it.
     Smith: I always thought I wanted to write for the widest possible audience. Sometimes I almost considered myself something of a bridge from one subculture to a larger audience. It was an interesting line because you want to write for people who had been at that show and who were knowledgeable about that particular artist while still making it interesting enough and entertaining enough for that little old lady in Cranston.
     Question: How do you deal with a performer such as Frank Sinatra when he is past his prime?
     Smith: I think I wrote two or three reviews. I alluded to his problems. One of the times I saw him there were still splashes of what he had been and the others were pretty much lost. I probably pulled my punches a little bit because of who he was.
     Question: What happens when someone says, you don't know what you are talking about?
     Watson: No one has asked, 'what are your credentials.' But what I have found is that people ask, 'are you a musician, do you play?'
     Gale: I have that question all of the time and I never know what answer they want. Do they want me to say, 'yes I'm a playwright', and they can say, 'oh, he's a failed playwright.' Basically I am a journalist who moved into criticism. Most newspaper reviewers moved into it. And if they are serious about it, they've studied theater history.
     Watson: I'm asked that question probably four times a week. 'Are you a musician?' It's like a conversation starter. And they ask, 'well how did you get into this.' And I say 'I'm coming at this from a reporter's background and that I aspire to write about culture and arts and diversity.'
     Smith: I watch a lot of TV. I watched the Flintstones while I was growing up. You can take courses in media studies, but I don't know if it will make you a better critic. The point Bill made earlier is that essentially you are still one person's opinion. Hopefully it is an opinion you can back up with a lot of experience and some facts. I tell people who call me up and I say, 'look just because you liked the show and I did not like the show, my opinion does not invalidate your opinion. You still had a good time.' I'm not pretending that I am the be-all and the end-all and that I want to destroy your good time. I just happened to be hired by a newspaper to be able to do this for a living.
     Gale: The last thing I want to say is that most of what we go see is neither wonderful or awful. It's in the great gray middle. And our job is to make that interesting.
     Smith: That's very difficult. The easiest reviews to write are when they are very, very good or very, very bad.

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