Units

A response to Richard Brody's response to Sia Michel's response to the labor of arts reviewers

RCA presented Elvis with his first gold record (“Heartbreak Hotel”) while he was in the studio recording his second (“I Want You, I Need You, I Love You”). With drummer D.J. Fontana, singer Gordon Stoker and guitarist Scotty Moore

New York Times culture editor Sia Michel recently made “some changes in assignments” for a number of the paper’s critics, removing them from the duty of daily reviews. These jobs are not necessarily being replaced – in a telling gesture, classical music critic Zach Woolfe was, according to Hell Gate, offered reassignment to the obituary desk. Indeed, no one seems to know what comes next for theater, television or music coverage in the paper of record – a pivot to video, which the Times was already busy pushing, doesn’t seem to be enough any longer. Michel’s internal memo to staff, leaked first to Variety and then published in full by Playbill, reads less like a directive than a call for suggestions:

"This department has already made major strides to adapt to t…