The Assassination of the Film Critic by the Coward Establishment.

During the last couple of weeks a lot has been made about the fact that newspapers and print mediums have been firing critics en masse.
Literature reviews are scarce in mainstream newspapers, culture critics have been replaced by uneducated gossip writers and not counting established film writers like Roger Ebert, the idea of film criticism has been reduced to PR clippings that focus on Angelina's latest scandal while promoting her new movie.
It's truly a shame that society has reduced the debate of arts to a cult instead of encouraging it, since talk about art inspires art.
As Nick James reminds us "Never mind that it was a bunch of critics that transformed cinema in the 1950s to create the nouvelle vague, or that another bunch paved the way for Britain's "Angry Young Men" to transform British cinema in the 1960s."
Roger Ebert writes a fantastic, funny piece in his blog and "Sight and Sound" offers a fascinating take by James on how the British are facing this phenomenon. Both articles are a meta reminder that without these people there wouldn't be pieces demanding pieces were being written and what a boring world would that be.