Scott Tobias on the Business of Film Criticism

On this week’s episode, Sonny talks to Scott Tobias, formerly of The AV Club and The Dissolve, about his new Substack endeavor with Keith Phipps, The Reveal, as well as the evolving world of film criticism. With so many local newspapers cutting back on movie reviewers for budgetary reasons and so many websites merely hitting the most popular of topics to generate clicks, it’s interesting—and, frankly, heartening—to see Substack using their Pro program to help critics like Tobias and Phipps (along with Ty Burr and Jerry Saltz) stand up their own newsletters to chase their own idiosyncratic interests. Can the “Thousand True Fans” theorem save the world of interesting film writing?