The Fate of the Critic in the Clickbait Age

Alex Ross | The New Yorker | 14th March 2017

A topic dear to The Easel’s heart. Newspapers’ challenge to arts criticism is ‘why publish what no-one reads’? This feisty essay pushes back. Is the value of cultural commentary adequately measured by click rates? As the writer tartly observes, criticism is “the only antidote we have to paid publicity.” Who else does the critic’s “irritating, somehow necessary job: to stand in a public space and say, “Not quite.”