Mar 9, 2010

Trade Nix Crix

Changing of the guard is one thing. But what does it say when they keep firing the guard and not replacing him?

Variety theater editor David Rooney assigned and published my first New York theater review a month before I moved here back in summer '05. It was a great welcome. So it's not more than just bad news for the arts and entertainment journalism racket that the trade has cut him loose as theater editor in favor of an all-freelance approach; it's a blow that hits home for me. Obviously someone will have to continue to assign and edit those reviews, and we just have to hope it's someone with a fragment of the acuity and sensitivity that Rooney brought to the job. I also hope we'll get to continue reading his work in some venue or other. He has been a consistently fine and straight-shooting critic, and he willed be missed.

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