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The Tribune's looking for a new movie critic, preferably a woman. It wants someone "to review major releases and to enhance our coverage of an increasingly important area in American culture and of heightened focus at the newspaper." It's the number two slot that opened up, but the job notice the Tribune posted in-house, at other Tribune Company papers, and on www.journalismjobs.com didn't get into that. "The critic should possess a broad knowledge of movies, a contemporary perspective on their evolution and have an informed, entertaining, accessible writing style. Candidates should have the ability to analyze movies as individual works of art and to relate movie themes to the larger world of pop culture and trends in society." Nothing in the job notice says the Tribune favors a woman, but it does. Entertainment editor Scott Powers concedes that "the diversity of voices has to be an important factor for any hiring decision." The Web site www.moviecitynews.com reported this week that seven women critics were flown to Chicago to discuss the job, but that's probably an overstatement. I know of two women and a man who have been in Chicago for talks. The Tribune made the opportunity sound spectacular: "Coverage of major film festivals is a key part of the job, as is writing larger expository pieces on developments in the industry. . . . This critic's reviews should appeal to readers as great pieces of writing, beyond their crucial function in guiding readers' moviegoing decisions." Mary Elson, associate managing editor for features, says the Tribune was hit with a "tidal wave . . . hundreds of responses . . . a pool of really, really spectacular people." The most obvious in-house candidate to fill the new position -- not that in-house candidates have been seriously considered -- is Mark Caro. After all, Caro filled the old one -- "Tribune movie reporter." He began reviewing movies for the Tribune in 1995 as Michael Wilmington's number two, more likely to write up the new movie opening at the multiplexes than the one at Landmark's Century Centre. A versatile writer, Caro took on occasional other assignments, such as a profile last fall of presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. But film was his focus, and the Tribune Web site called him a movie critic. His byline didn't, however, and neither did his pay grade. From time to time Caro suggested he be formally upgraded to critic, but his bosses kept finding reasons to say no. A month ago the ambiguity was lifted from Caro's status. He was taken off movies and reassigned as an "entertainment reporter." Powers says, "He's extraordinarily valuable to the paper in that role." Elson says, "He had reporting skills that were the best of anybody on our staff." The search for a new critic is to fill the hole caused by Caro's transfer. Caro could be indefinitely denied the title of critic because he was already on staff, but you can't string along somebody you haven't hired yet or cheap out a position if you hope to fill it with anyone good. So the title denied Caro is being dangled before the applicants to succeed him. Caro has mixed feelings about this. "I'm glad I was finally able to convince the Tribune they need a second critic," he says. On the other hand, "I think in the Tribune culture, reporting is valued higher than reviewing. I don't necessarily think that's wrong. I've always valued reporting myself." When he was young he wanted to be Royko, not Siskel. Wilmington has a favorite candidate, but he wouldn't tell me who. He's contributed his own opinions to the search process, but he's basically watching it from the sidelines, perhaps uneasily. "We're creating an additional full-time critic's slot," says Elson. "Not number one or number two." Wilmington has his own memories of life as a number two. Until the Tribune hired him away in 1993 he'd been the second-string critic at the Los Angeles Times. The Times had hired him from a local alternative paper nine years earlier. "He thought the Times was offering him a job on staff," I wrote in '93. "What he got, thanks to management shifts, routine bureaucratic betrayal, and his own naivete, was high-profile piecework -- no desk to call his own, no health insurance." He was still freelancing when he left the Times for the Tribune. Praise or Petulance?Journalists don't read newspapers the same way other people do. Here's evidence of that. On Friday, July 30, Michael Sneed, reporting from the Democratic National Convention for the Sun-Times, contributed a juicy little story that posed the question in the headline: "Is Jackson Jr. jealous of Obama's ascent?" "It all began quietly enough," Sneed wrote. "A chance encounter in the elevator of the Hilton Boston Back Bay Hotel, where the Illinois delegation was staying . . . and a whispered comment by Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. about the Democratic Party's new messiah, Barack Obama. "'If I'm not mistaken, I believe he took elements of Dr. King's original "I Have A Dream" speech to use in his address,' stated Jackson -- referring to Obama's Democratic National Convention oratory, which has propelled him into the political stratosphere. "Hmmm. Compliment or criticism? "It sounded more like a whiff of jealousy . . . " No way, said the congressman, who called Sneed as soon as he read the story. Obama and I are old friends. So Sneed took it back. She squeezed in an extra paragraph at the top of her column on Sunday, August 1, that said: "First let me clear one thing up. I wrote about Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. making a comment about Barack Obama's speech and I wrote it the way I heard it, but Jackson told me Friday that definitely was not how he meant it. He said Obama's speech was strong and compelling like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech and I apologize to Jackson for any misunderstanding." Letters from Jackson and Obama in the same issue of the Sun-Times insisted on their amity. Sneed reader Darrell Mitchell, a belligerently familiar presence in the in-boxes of Chicago journalism, launched e-mail to every Sun-Times personage he could think of denouncing her for bowing to the "Jackson family mafia." Assuming we'd appreciate his critique, he included the Reader on his mailing list. I'd barely finished his diatribe when I got a call from one of Chicago journalism's shrewd old hands. His take on Sneed's story was totally different. I've read it a couple of times, he said, and I'm not sure she was even in the elevator. He pointed out the telltale signs of professional-strength weasel wording. |
