Tuesday Afternoon Diversion: Siskel & Ebert on Criticism

By Chuck Sudo in Miscellaneous on Jan 11, 2011 9:00PM

Years ago (we forget when or where) we read a bit of advice from Roger Ebert about how he writes his movie reviews like casual conversations, in order for the reader to feel like he could enter the discussion at a given point. It was a point that we took to heart once we began to become serious about food writing, one that greatly helped us as we became more confident in writing reviews. posted this on his blog today. It's a discussion between him and the late Gene Siskel about how to be a film critic that was taped for an instructional video series on journalism for high school and college students. But it can also be used to be a primer of any criticism in journalism, be it art, media, or food. Ebert's comment about "political correctness being the fascism of the 90's" still rings true today. Don't you ever change, Roger.