Critics need thicker skin than ever in the age of Twitter

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With a month to go before entries for the Observer/Anthony Burgess prize for arts journalism close, a former winner assesses the perilous lot of the critic in the social media era

Many people hate reviewers. Sometimes even reviewers hate themselves. As the literary critic Cyril Connolly put it glumly, reviewing can feel like “the thankless task of drowning other people’s kittens”.

In the social media age, things are complicated by the fact that the subjects of reviews can claw back. Last month, the American singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey took a swipe at the veteran US music critic Ann Powers via the unholy medium of Twitter. “Here’s a little sidenote on your piece,” she typed with seemingly ice-cool rage. “I don’t even relate to one observation you made about the music. There’s nothing uncooked about me.”

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2BNDJ1O

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