Donna Seaman: No, certainly not. But the big difference [in] print is the role of the editor. The being subjected to the editorial eye, to constraints regarding form, length, voice. It’s like writing a sonnet instead of a stream-of-consciousness monologue.

Jim DeRogatis: I think professionalism is earned by the writing. Not by whether or not one is paid.

Donna Seaman: Yes, but oh, can’t critics earn a living?

Kris Vire: Decreasingly so, it seems.

Jim DeRogatis: Lester Bangs earned $15 for a 3,000-word review, and it might have been brilliant. Some idiot in Rolling Stone today makes $1.50 a word, and he’s sold his soul and is impossible to read on top of it.

Sam Jones: And yet I know it’s just a practical fact that someone who has devoted their career to this, at their best, will be far better than anything I can do.

Jim DeRogatis: In any event, I seriously worry that we may be moving to a world in which no one is paid to be a critic, and we are all amateurs. Worry in the sense of, I will have to write my reviews for free at night after working as a greeter at Home Depot during the day.

Chuck Sudo: There are some writers I’ve spoken with who work tirelessly, yet barely make ends meet.

Kris Vire: Right. When I was a freelancer I had to bartend on the side—which tended to get in the way of seeing theater.

Chuck Sudo: It’s a genuine concern, and one I fear may dissuade them from writing about the subject they’re so good at.

Jim DeRogatis: It’s the same as many painters, poets, musicians, Chuck. Why should critics be exempt? Oscar Wilde, “The Critic as Artist,” remember...

Anne Holub: But what if the Web is simply a medium for people who have to work that Home Depot job during the day? And even if they’re not getting paid, they’re still writing good stuff…but instead of handing it out on mimeographed copies at the El station, they have a blog?

Don Hall: The “pamphleteers” of a New Digitized Age...

Jim DeRogatis: That's cool, Anne. I’m just saying those of us who get paid may be dinosaurs and better be thinking of what we’ll do next, once all the print publications die.

Jim DeRogatis: I mean, the folks at Pitchfork ain’t making a living at it. Not the writers. The guys who own it…oh yeah.

Donna Seaman: Things are so out of proportion. Creative, thoughtful work is undervalued; the budget for a single TV ad could save the CTA.

Anne Holub: That’s always the case, isn’t it?

Jim DeRogatis: That’s what the Writers Guild strike is about, Donna.

Donna Seaman: We’re seeing a rapid evolution of websites, however. As print may go the way of the dinosaurs, there is more traditional editorial professionalism online. And yes, the strike! More power to them.

Sam Jones: The question is whether the market appreciates the editorial function enough to pay for it.

Mike Sula: I’m increasingly skeptical.

Donna Seaman: Right. We want everything for free. Especially in Cyberland.

Jim DeRogatis: Who is making a living from writing for the Web, though?

Sam Jones: Some bloggers with big audiences who sell ads.

Chuck Sudo: That answer is somewhere between “few” and “none.”

Anne Holub: I know a couple. (That would be two.) But I’m seeing increasingly more work, granted at the corporate, nonliterary level for Web content.

Don Hall: The answer is three.

Sam Jones: Shoot, I thought it was four.

Donna Seaman: For those of us in print, we’re working double time to cover the online edition. No extra compensation, of course.

Jim DeRogatis: When all is said and done, big-picture–wise, the idea of being paid to be a critic (or a journalist period) may appear as a brief 150-year blip in the history of mankind and written communication.

Kris Vire: Speaking of those of us who write in print and online, do you approach the two differently? I tend to write in a different voice on the blog than in the magazine, I think.

Don Hall: You do.

Sam Jones: In print I have deadlines, which I hate.

Donna Seaman: When I write strictly for the Web, I do write a bit more informally.

Chuck Sudo: The Web medium lends itself to informality very well.

Anne Holub: I like the wide-open spaces of writing for the Web. Word limits aren’t as harsh.

Donna Seaman: Ah, no word count. Heaven.

Kris Vire: I do get jealous of the lengthy reviews Don gets to indulge in.

Anne Holub: The Web still smacks of a casual conversation, even on the online versions of “serious journalism.”

Donna Seaman: Yes, and conversation is vital.

Chuck Sudo: I remember Roger Ebert once wrote that he writes his movie reviews as though you’re walking in on the middle of a conversation, and that’s something I try to achieve online.

Jim DeRogatis: The Web also lends itself to incredible unreliability. There are lots of stories long since proven categorically false floating out there in Webland just waiting for you to Google them. And they will never be corrected. We still have the right of print to expect such frivolities as fact checking and copy editing.

Donna Seaman: There is no writing, only rewriting.

Jim DeRogatis: To the question, though: I try to have the same voice in print, on radio and on the Web. Only the means of delivery change. I try, anyway. Maybe my readers, listeners and surfers would say differently.

Sam Jones: Well on the Web I can treat my readers more intimately, because I know them. I can treat them as “initiates” to whom not everything must be explained.