Why Do I Bother Writing Reviews?
Open thread discussion about what narrative podcast criticism aims to accomplish, and why...also an inadvertent admission of how much time I'm spending on Twitter
Over this past week, there have been a few unrelated events and things that I have that have happened around me which have pushed me to think more deeply about what I’m doing here, in Bingeworthy. I’ve been at this for six months now, which I guess makes this more of a first-quarter self-review, mixed with a bit of self-imposed critique.
I launched Bingeworthy to mark International Podcast Day, last September 30. This idea has been on my mind for years before I managed to actually commit the time and energy to do it. Once I began, it further languished on my to-do list and drafts folder for six months. Having a somewhat arbitrary deadline of a “holiday” to shoot far was what I needed to get it over the line last September.
My stated goal, which has not changed, though it’s not particularly eloquent, is to do what I can to “help make narrative podcasts a thing.” Not that they aren’t already, but this is my effort to push them into a “pickleball” category of thing-ness.
So far, I have managed to publish each week, for a total of 27 posts. The slender archive holds a mixture of reviews (12 of them and counting), conversations, some essays, and two two ‘updates,’ aka, I’m actually on vacation but still trying to publish. Everything can be found here.
These events, totally unrelated but somehow connected on some sort of ‘synchro destiny’ way, made me stop to think further about all of this. So rather than fight these invisible forces, quietly denying each of their relevance or connection, I am instead going to neatly lay them all out for you, and proceed to pick at them like teenage acne, with the hopes of producing something…productive.
The email in my inbox
One of the producers/hosts that I had recently been in touch with to answer some email Q+A responded to my questions first with a question:
“How are these business questions going to get more people to listen to the show?”
As you might have gathered from reading these posts, my questions generally first dive into nerdy producer-ly questions; and always include some variation of How Did This Story Get Made?
Why? I find this endlessly interesting. Sorry if you don’t. Maybe it’s the reason I started this newsletter in the first place….so that I can have a reason to go and ask this question to the people I want the answer from!
I like to ask this question because I’m a producer as well, and I ask myself this with every new RSS that I stumble across. Plus, every producer I know asks themselves this question each time a new project comes to them—except they ask it in the reverse: How am I going to make this thing?
More generally, I think what this producer was actually asking me was: what’s the point of subjecting myself to your questions if I don’t know whether or not you’re going to tear my hard work apart?
Fair enough. And without throwing away all my journalistic credibility, I like to assure them that I am inquisitive, fair, and even if I’m not thrilled with the story, I’m kind. Rob Rosenthal is there to remind me of kindness in the face of criticism, and how to be kind, if I forget, I just go and listen to the Sound School Podcast.
Here’s how I responded to this question:
My read of that audience is that they want to know more than the story that’s told in the series (based on this piece, they will either go and listen to it, or learn more after they have listened). Maybe they’ve made a series, or work somewhere and want to learn more about how another series was made.
So in that way it’s more about positioning you as a maker and creator among the people who listen, or make decisions in companies.
My focus is around growing a body of criticism about narrative podcasts…and to get there I think the business of making these shows is part of the story. Plus, I don’t see anyone else writing as much about that angle, so that’s where I went.
The other reason that I like to include a Q+A in my reviews, which I realize is not an industry standard, is because I think it’s fair. It offers the producer a way to respond to some of the criticisms that I may have about the show, and provide some kind of reference point, or offer some background that I don’t know. That has happened on multiple occasions so far. It has been immensely helpful.
I don’t cherish the idea of being someone who has the ability to change the public opinion of a series.
Godspeed, should the distribution size of this newsletter reaches a zenith where this might be an actual concern, but this is not my aim. I am not here to power trip and suggest that I have all the answers. Rather, I look at this newsletter as a way to extend the conversation around the art and the craft of narrative storytelling, because it is my nerdy obsession, the hill upon which I wish to die.
The power that documentarians hold based on the fact that they are “distributing” another person’s story is a balance of power that should be examined. Stay tuned for my conversation with Jess Shane next week, which follows her story for BBC’s Lights Out: Accounts and Accountability.
Similarly, the power that a critic holds to sway others’ opinions should also be examined. And although I haven’t managed to do this each time, this is why I like to include a Q+A with the producer, or the host, of the series, so that I get a sense from the inside about how this story hits the world.
A tweet that led to a newsletter that led to…
As I’ve watched my Substack mailbox tip from a couple, to a few, to a dozen, to a full scroll in a rather short order…I imagine others are feeling the same thing that I was.
From this tweet, I went to read the longer post, on Ann Friedman’s website, which featured a blog post about this same issue, newsletters, and the saturation of said market.
The prominence of newsletters is part of a bigger shift happening in media, away from publications and toward individuals.
Ann Friedman is co-host to the podcast Call Your Girlfriend, which wrapped up about a year ago, but was one of the OG chat shows, which launched in 2014. From this show, Ann has built, basically, an empire, which like most empires now, has an impressive (and likely very lucrative) newsletter.
Friedman writes that when she began to offer memberships, she priced the minimum at $5/year…which is now far below the minimum on Substack, which is more in the $40-50/year range (the same price, she points out, to a subscription to a Magazine like The Atlantic, which offers multiple voices and accounts for the same price of /one voice).
The model of the magazine, or “collective journalism,” helps new writers establish themselves alongside those who are better known. The newsletter economy, she scathingly exposes, is “a bit of a pyramid scheme;” some getting rich, and lots and lots and lots of others at the bottom.
I cannot boast numbers like hers, but I would be lying if I was to say that her metrics are *counter* to my own goals. Should someone want to pay me to publish me in any number of collective journalistic enterprises hit me up…but you see, in the absence of that happening, people like me who have something to say about something dodge around the gatekeepers and just start. Here.
Amy Westervelt’s Tweet
And then I came across this one:
There was more online chatter about this, the cancellation of a hot show by a hot company about a scorching topic. And more from Amy, who en-même-temps dropped the 8th (!) season of Drilled (which is awesome…stay tuned later in April for more on this series), it made me go back and wonder some more about this whole system of “independent journalism.”
Sometimes those new independent outlets begin to look like the other outlets, the old outlets; the same ones that the independents fled in order to have a voice of their own...only to mimic that power dynamic they chose to flee. It’s almost Passover, the story is coming back to me again.
And then A.O. Scott resigned his post as film reviewer for the NYTimes
“Tony” as Michael Barbaro calls him in his own exit interview on The Daily, writes his review to make you feel like you can have an opinion about a film, whether or not you have seen it. He never spoils the plot, but his pithy responses leave you with a feeling, about the story or the actors, hung around the concrete details of the plot, to give you what you need but no more. He has done this for more than 20 years.
I went back to read his reviews of two films I have actually seen in the theatre this year: Knives Out: Glass Onion—his description of Daniel Craig as “floridly post-Bond” who is now “sporting an absurd but somehow appropriate collection of neckerchiefs,” is wordcel art in top form—and Women Talking, the recent Oscar-winning film, where he veered about as close as he gets to lavish praise, and concludes: “The women don’t want pity or revenge. They want a better world. Why not listen?”
I’ve been listening to and making narrative podcasts for a decade; I’ve only actively been writing about them for six months. I wondered if I could sustain this publishing pace, even for a few years, let alone another decade. Imagine how many hours that would be. How many headphones I would burn through? How many long walks and loads of laundry folded…
“Tony” did his own exit interview, published in the NYTimes, in which he explains why he’s throwing in the popcorn of reviewing the movies to go back and review books, “after I find my reading glasses and rebuild my attention span.”
His departure of course made me want to go back and read more of his reviews. I wondered: What is his magic sauce? How did he sustain his streak for 20 years (he reckons that if he reviews 100 films per year, he’s seen at least 300, and then multiply that by 20…the number is shockingly huge). For all that, he has published 2,293 reviews in the New York Times; a giant number, but also helps you to see that he certainly does not write a review for each film he sees.
If you think of this just in terms of film technology, he has moved from the Paleozoic era of 35mm film, through the Mesozoic era of Blockbuster and Netflix as a DVD mail-order company, and cruised into the Cenozoic era, where ‘films’ now also complete with Youtube, streaming giants and all the technology-adapted universe of 3D, bumpy seats and theatres that offer a full sensory overload. Trying to imagine what podcasts will look like in 20 years is fascinating, and a bit terrifying.
“Tony,” because I feel like we’re on a first-name basis now that I’ve occupied a rabbit-hole corner of the Internet with his writing this week, reminds me that this is a verifiable ‘job.’ Some people even get paid to do it. And the reason why it has existed for so long is because people like to share thoughts about stories they listen to. So, keep on keeping on here.
A Comment was posted about one of my reviews
So far I’ve written one review for a series that I didn’t love. I tend to gravitate to things that I do like, so this one caught me off guard. I was sure I was going to love it, until I didn’t.
Maybe it caught me on a bad day, but that’s part of the job too. I stand by everything that I said, and sure, maybe I should have reached out to ask questions, but I didn’t. The act of writing a review that pointed out flaws, rather than celebrating all the genius kernels of a series, was a good experience and a great learning curve.
When a comment was posted that disagreed with this review, it made me think:
Was it a lot of salt? Or was it a reasonable amount of sodium chloride to put on top of series, which I repeatedly said, could have been great, but took a turn in another direction? As for older style of podcasting, that’s interesting. It has some merit…but I would (argue) that the genre has evolved along with it.
A reminder and an open question of who reviews are for
As I pondered my response to the producer had been the right one (from the above-mentioned email exchange), and also my assumption that I told her that this audience, who graciously offers their time and attention to read Bingeworthy, I stumbled across this tweet:
This put me back down into the rabbit hole. Is it possible to write criticism BOTH for the industry, AND for the listener?
To be clear, I should put the word Industry in air quotes here, because often that term makes it feel like it’s puff, or there as a marketing arm, or there to push a certain objective.
When I say Industry, I actually mean the industry of those who make narrative podcasts…which by default then often means those who pay for them and those who monetize them.
But all of that, all y’all, please hear me: I’m still working towards the same end here.
To raise the conversation about what narrative podcasts are, how they get made…and the creative, practical, political and economic choices that go into making them.
All with the goal that if more people know what they are, or why they are made, or how it all came together, so that more people know just that.
And all of that goes into a wider acknowledgment that makes narrative podcasts “a thing.”
