Among my many love-hate relationships is my loyalty to Entertainment Weekly, a magazine I’ve been reading pretty much non-stop since its inception. Every year, though, I come very, very close to not renewing my subscription. Coincidentally each time my expiration comes up, EW does some kind of revamp of its format, usually in a way that makes it seem even more dumbed down than it already was. But I keep sticking with it, partly because it’s the only magazine that has that perfect balance between real journalism and gossip that I enjoy for such light-reading locales as the gym and the bathroom (sorry). It has somehow remained on the side of respectable movie coverage — even if it primarily serves Hollywood’s marketing departments — while its cousins US Weekly and Movieline completely caved to become clones of People and Star (hooray for the return of a better Movieline online, btw).
EW may not be for everyone, but for those of us who love it or need it as a kind of week-ending recap of Hollywood news and pop-cultural fluff, it would be a shame to see the print version disappear (despite the fact that blog, I actually don’t prefer to read content online and rarely visit EW.com to read features) or even merge with a more gossip-centric mag. And now that Time Inc. has canned Scott Donaton, EW’s fifth publisher in five years, the rumors and speculation circulating about the mag’s troubles have me worried that I’ll soon only have Mental_Floss left as far as light, enjoyable magazines I subscribe to.
Check out the terrific reactions of two other bloggers, both of whom have written for EW at some time (I actually wish I could say the same), after the jump. And chime in below if you also hope the mag sticks around and/or doesn’t change for the worse.
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In a podcast conversation with Keith Uhlich at The House Next Door, the group blog whose Blogger URL contains his name, Matt Zoller Seitz has announced that he’s giving up writing print criticism. This formal declaration comes two weeks after Seitz made some critical comments about the conflict between print and web criticism at the Moving Image Institute; two weeks before that, Seitz writes in the podcast’s comments, he gave notice that he was leaving his post as back-up critic for the New York Times, meaning his piece on the jazz in film series at MoMA will be his last for that publication. In the same comment, Seitz says he’ll be replaced by Nathan Lee, who intimated in last week’s Rotten Tomatoes interview that all those Saturday afternoons devoted to sex and Madame Bovary had paid off in a new position at a major publication.
The House Next Door will carry on under Keith Uhlich’s leadership. Seitz, who says he’ll continue to post on the site, is also planning on devoting the summer to making a puppet movie––and anyone who will be in Dallas in July and August who wants to get involved with production is invited to send him an email through the site. I’ve excerpted a portion of the transcription of the podcast, in which Seitz succinctly explains his decision to move on from the print world, after the jump.
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