Objectivity in journalism may not exist, but most poor quality journalism I find is directly correlated to how big a fanboy that person is about the particular subject.
You need intelligence when approaching criticism far more than reverence, is I guess what I'm saying. If someone can intelligently relate to me specifically why they might not like the Beatles, or specific song, in a way that I can understand, I would consider that person more trustworthy than the alternative.
But that relies on me, or rather the reader/audience, to be open and receptive to challenging opinions.
I look around on YouTube for recordings I like. There are lots of recordings I don't like for whatever reason. I don't post them. Why bother?
So, nowadays, I'm not sure why anyone should spend time reviewing music they don't like. At all. What's the point? The slush pile is vast. Make the best collection you can of stuff you like. If other people find it good then maybe they'll start to trust your judgement.
Admittedly, I have a tiny audience, a newspaper is a little different, and sometimes people like to read a good takedown. But it seems unnecessary?
If something is extremely popular but you perceive something wrong about it of course that's a good reason to write about it.
At the same time many critics seem to just try to put artists down because that makes it seem the critic is above the artist because he can see the wrongness in the artist. Critics are wannabe artists.
It's different for other media, like an article about how a book or TV show or movie is historically inaccurate is sometimes fun.
I guess it's just the wrongheaded logic of criticism: The critic must prove they are doing their job. They are "critics", right? Therefore they must criticize. :-)
That happens more in video games reviews than in movies but often reviewer reviews some title in niche genre well but it isn't anything worth attention for actual fan because it doesn't do anything special over different games in the title or is outright going backward.
But the "omni-reviewer" that reviews everything that comes their way won't know that, they play say RTS or some strategy game once every 3 years so anything that seems pretty competent gets a good score even if compared to the peers in the genre it might be weak. Ability to communicate flaws doesn't help here really that much if reviewer by nature of their generalism doesn't even have point of comparison.
That's not how it is at all for games, though, is it? I mean, there are very few niche genres that gamers (even if they aren't reviewers) haven't tried.
A games reviewer will at least have already played the most popular games for each of the popular genres. You will find it hard to find a games reviewer who hasn't played the top RTS games, the top FPS games, the top Mobile games, the top RPG games, etc.
> That happens more in video games reviews than in movies but often reviewer reviews some title in niche genre well but it isn't anything worth attention for actual fan because it doesn't do anything special over different games in the title or is outright going backward.
But niche genres don't do well anyway. If the game is not a side-scroller, a platformer, a dungeon crawler, an RTS, an FPS, a point-and-click, an ARPG, a hidden object game, an RPG ... what exactly is it[1]?
If the game doesn't fall neatly into a genre, then it's not going to do well anyway, because ordinary players won't be able to review just like the reviewer won't be able to review it - what exactly do they compare it to?
[1] This is one of the problems that plagued Brigador, which didn't neatly fit into a genre and was a failure.
Funny enough we are actually took a step BACK from marketwide aggregated ratings in recent years.
Using RT as an example, they changed their system in recent years so their shareholders had more control over the ratings, who can rate them and what is said.
They basically shifted from a simple internet movie rating site to slowly becoming another Hollywood mouthpiece with their selection of pro-Hollywood narrative critics and making it harder for normal people to raise opinions, we seem to be reverting back to the status quo.
It'd be a shame if the audience rating became less reliable in that regard.
RT is not such a good example - didn't they recently start weighting reviews (viewer reviews count less and less)?
I think Metacritic still allows you to see the viewer reviews independently of the critic reviews. I remember using Metacritic in the past, and my general experience was that any movie with:
1. High reviews from the critics but low reviews from the viewers = probably trash, expect to be assaulted with some deeper meaning or message which is completely out of context.
2. Low reviews from critics but high reviews from viewers = Probably good entertainment, bring the popcorn but don't expect a deep message from the movie.
3. Consistently low reviews = absolute trash, don't waste your money
4. Consistently high reviews = appeals to a very broad segment of the population, probably appeals to you too.
A music critic can't just say "I didn't care for it" and move on - or rather, they could, but then they wouldn't write the article.
I think the lesson here is more for the editors: maybe find someone who's a fan to write the piece? Or maybe we get a better picture now that aggregate ratings (like Rotten Tomatoes) are widespread?