Reviews as journalism

My colleague Richard Brody, in response to the New York Times's abrupt reassignment of four arts critics, has written a vigorous defense of the "traditional review," pointing out that most other forms of commentary on the arts tend toward promotion and puffery, thereby tending away from independent journalism. I took up the same topic some years back, quoting Virgil Thomson's immortal definition of criticism as “the only antidote we have to paid publicity.” What's particularly odd about the Times's demand for "new story forms" is that Zack Woolfe, one of the four demoted critics, did as much as anyone to undertake such experiments, as the culture editor Sia Michel herself acknowledges in a memo. (It's Zack, not Zach.)