Last week I described Sheila Farr, former Seattle Times art critic, as a "notably disengaged critic at a deeply disengaged newspaper." For contrast I pointed to the contributions of Regina Hackett at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Then just a few days later came the announcement that Hackett is probably about to lose the job she's held for 28 years.

On the surface it looks like the differences between them don't matter a bit—that they are two women in the same field who fell to the same fate for the same reasons at the same time. But there are profound lessons in their differences. And after the P-I is dead and gone, as it probably will be by mid-March, the Times still has a chance to learn from those lessons—and all of us can remember them, too.

I did not mean to pick on Farr. I'd repeatedly tried not to comment on the mixed meanings of her departure. But when its impact was misrepresented in a national conversation about criticism and art in Seattle, it was my obligation to speak up.

In general, I never want to see an art critic position axed from a newspaper. But the way Farr practiced criticism was emblematic of the way newspapers—not just their arts staffs—can no longer afford to act: as if authority doesn't need to be earned, and can't be taken away. As if authority were static: once established, forever held. That was never really true in newspapers. You were always only as good as your next story. It is an oppressive truth, but it keeps print journalists honest and striving. And now, with the proliferation and speed of voices on the internet, authority is even more continually gathered, performed, and tested.

Is it possible that the Times might still take a lesson from a lowly art critic at the P-I, who is probably going to lose her job, yes, but whose blog about art took off on a local and a national level and will probably provide Hackett with connections and paying work for years to come? I hope so. While Hackett revved up online (taking "my best shot, my best shot"—from the hip, from the head, from wherever), Farr stayed aloof: rarely going to shows and publishing exclusively in print. Aloofness versus engagement is more than just a style. It characterizes your relationship with your readers. It can also characterize your future.

The Times's art coverage was classically institutional, from an earlier version of cities and their hierarchies. I'm not proposing that anyone take on the simple mentality of the anti-institutional blogger. And do not presume that working for The Stranger makes a writer anti-institutional: Despite its diversionary oppositional tactics, The Stranger is every bit as much an institution as the Times. It's just that The Stranger, like other more adaptive publications and companies, is an institution founded on the creativity of dissenting individuals. (A parody of this post will appear on Slog in three, two, one...) This gives The Stranger plenty of its own problems. But maybe it would be a helpful ingredient in places where it's lacking? Is the creativity of engaged individuals an important part of what's encouraged at the Seattle Times?

Maybe I'm spitting in the wind, but I'd like to hope that there's something to all this. More than anything, I want my institutions to deserve the authority they wield—by being creative, by innovating, by adapting—before they lose it completely. I want to believe in the future of the Seattle Times.

This all applies to me, too. I'm not trying to march around pretending I'm the dean of something. Even if Hackett does continue as an influential blogger—and I was heartened to hear she plans to—the most likely scenario come April is that I'll be the only full-time newspaper art critic in town. I guess I'm using this opportunity to tell you what I believe in. And to vow that I'll stay engaged. I am aware that having a job is not the same as deserving it.