Lots of folks, art critics included, prefer print, and not just because of the pay factor. But I think that will start to change — my budget’s certainly not what I’d like it to be, and we certainly aren’t able to pay people what I’d like to to write for the web site. But as the economics of this shift get sorted out, that will hopefully change too.

What you wrote in your last sentence is just so. There will always be a space for good writing, I think, and thoughtful art criticism is certainly something we want to help flourish.

Still, I don’t know if it’s exactly inertia that’s keeping our most accomplished and experienced critical writers from fully embracing the web as a new medium for their work. Most writers I talk to are keenly aware of the oncoming sea-change, but still they prefer the less ephemeral (and therefore moresignificant) nature of writing for print. Also, even more importantly, writers are aware of the fact that web writing pays almost nothing–even compared to the (rather meagre) wages they used to make from print publications.

I’m guessing when someone figures out how to make the web pay decently for writing, then the writers will come to it.

A lot of that content is going to have to migrate to the Internet. Which is great, because we can do that. Unfortunately, I worry that a lot of excellent content is going to get lost in the shuffle during that transition, since most freelancers are used to writing for print and inertia is a powerful force. But we’ll get past that, I hope.

I recently blogged (if I may be so bold) about Caroline’s (and other critics’) struggles to keep writing , and this recent article on mnartists, by Camille, is a very interesting look at the struggles of one critic to keep writing in the current atmosphere.

This is something we’ve wanted to do for a while, but just started. Here’s a link to Caroline’s first blogged review. You’ll likely see two or three items a month from her on our Culture to Go blog.

More is in the works for web-based coverage of dance and visual arts, and we’re very happy to have Caroline writing for both print and web.