This afternoon comes the news that Diane Haithman is out. No word yet on whether more culture staffers will be involved in the round, or how big and bad the round will be.

When these things happen, it's always the general-assignment arts writers who get cut, not the critics—the writers who do more of the getting-the-word-out work, not the name writers. Of course, this makes a certain amount of intrinsic sense, and I'm not arguing with it. Name writers like Christopher Knight or Christopher Hawthorne are name writers for a reason, and I'd argue that they do more to get the word out than anyone.

But I'm not necessarily in the majority on that one when it comes to the philosophy of arts journalism.

Yesterday I finally finished watching all the presentations and roundtables from the National Arts Journalism Summit that took place a few weeks ago in LA (YouTube channel with everything here), and I heard repeatedly in the projects that the summit organizers chose as examples of innovative arts journalism that criticism is really not all that important. Mark Mangan of Flavorpill summed it up neatly: "We only write about what we like." You have limited time in your life; why would you want to spend it reading about something the writer does not like, he said.

Jim Gaines of Flyp Media, put it even more pointedly when he said the place for the critic is on blogs. By contrast, "What we are selling, what we are attempting to create is engagement," he said. (I know we print types are slow to adapt, and I know we critics can be jerks—but as if we're not interested in engagement? Why did we get into this??)

In all the demo videos and conversations, I did find some things totally chastening and totally inspiring. For instance, I'm not using design or video almost at all to present stories and reviews, and that seems downright dumb. There were broader ideas, too, that I'm still considering, about attitude and approach. And the online editor of the Cedar Rapids Gazette, Steve Buttry, gave me the chills with his speech about the larger project of newspapers. "News, community connection, meaning, connection to the marketplace: those are our product, not ink on paper." I could get down with all of that—except the "connection to the marketplace" part makes me nervous. But I think he was saying that any web site has to be entrepreneurial, not that writers have to cover all those goals themselves, and I totally appreciate that. (The Stranger has been moving away from the traditional advertising-based model for some time, and that's part of why we still have jobs.)

But I still want to put in a plug for the value of criticism. The other day, when I dubbed The Seattle Times a "Stupid Fucking Credulous Hack" for promoting Seattle Art Museum's promotion of what is truly a thin Michelangelo show using a David replica, people got all over me for being overly serious and grouchy.

But if a newspaper put a cardboard cutout advertising a crappy big-budget movie on its front page rather than reviewing the movie in that space, wouldn't you notice? That's what the Times did, and I still say it was a sham. Several days later, the Times buried Gayle Clemans's fine review of the Michelangelo show inside the paper, as if to say that the promotion was more important than the review.

But which did more service to the reader? While the promotion touted the show, the review warned those about to pay SAM's $15 suggested donation that the show is only worth only a fraction of those bucks.

I was at the museum with Clemans during the press preview, so I know that she saw the exhibition before the Times splashed it on the front page. She easily could have told editors—uh, guys, this show isn't worth the hype.

But Clemans is not full-time at the paper, so front-page editors probably wouldn't even have cared. That's because the Times slashed its art critic position last year.

So, folks: That's stupid fucking credulous hackery in the field of arts journalism. No, nobody is going to die or be sent to prison for it. But it sucks nonetheless.