“My readers know more than me”

Lyn Gardner, a regular theatregoer all her life, has been a critic at the Guardian for their ‘Culture’ section since 1996. Before that she wrote for The Independent. After graduating in Drama and English from Kent University she began her career in journalism. She was a founding member of listings magazine City Limits, the largest co-op in Europe.

**As a journalist who has experienced first hand the changes that have been affected by new modes of media, what do you make of the current media climate and its future? **
LG: I think print journalism is changing because of the huge cultural shifts that are taking place because of technological advances. It’s just that we had one model for a very long time and now we are shifting to another and we don’t know exactly what it is and how it may look in the end. It’s a challenge – but not a catastrophe by any means. Look at the invention of the printing press, which was really bad for monks who painted manuscripts, but fantastic for reading. What’s going on with the web at the moment might not be good for print, newspapers, but it’s fantastic for journalism.

**Presumably because more journalists can have a platform on the internet?**
LG: Of course, you can have a plurality of voices in way that simply wasn’t possible before. It opens up, as the Guardian has done, the possibility that you can have a real dialogue with your readers. In the past, if someone wanted to communicate with me they would probably have to send me a letter to the Guardian address. And then I would have to write one back – very difficult.
One of the other things that you see very much with the Guardian is the idea of the ‘citizen journalist’, there are people there on the ground who absolutely know their local community and what is going on. That is a much better way to get information than sending a journalist from outside. The problem, of course, is ideally providing a model that still allows journalists to be paid.

**Yes, exactly; you’ve said that this new media is good for journalism, but is it good for journalists?**
LG: At the moment whenever you get two or three journalists gathered together there is obviously some considerable anxiety voiced about our futures. But, in a strange way – of course there are real concerns – but 15 years ago if I gave a talk at a university about being a theatre critic, I might have said “my name is Lyn Gardner and I’m a dodo on the verge of extinction.” But in a strange way, I don’t feel like a dodo, now, I feel that I’m part of a community, and having an on going dialogue with that community… the question is will there be a pay cheque at the end of the month.

**Absolutely, at the Open Weekend in a discussion between Sir David Hare and Michael Billington, Sir David said that professionals gave precedence to the the Guardian review. How do you feel about having so much authority? Michael Billington said that when he sits down to write a review, the time constraints are so severe that he doesn’t have time to think about how the actors will feel about what he writes.**
LG: Yes, I think that’s absolutely true. I think that when you are writing the review, in a sense the person you are most writing for is your editor, to fill that particular bit of space on the page on the paper. But actually, I think that all of us, I think that Michael would absolutely include himself in this, you do think about what the effect might be on the actors.
I have a little personal rule, which is that if the person is the star or somebody who is carrying the show it’s important to say if they’re not very good, because that’s absolutely crucial. But if they’re a minor part I wouldn’t, because my feeling is the actors have got to go out there and perform that night.
And it’s not merely the ‘third spear-carrier to the right’s’ fault that they’re not every good – it’s the fault of the director, the casting and what has gone on in the rehearsal process. So who is your responsibility to as a critic? In the end the surprising answer is that you are writing entertainingly for is your editor.

**Your job is so varied; could you give me a run through of a day in the life of a theatre critic? **
LG: The job isn’t just an evening job, I go to the theatre five or six times a week, but there is a huge amount of administration. I write features as well; I do a lot of blogging, so really the day begins early in the morning. So you know one of the things that has changed are the tools I use for journalism; I tweet and I blog – I see that as part of my job.
In the last 10 years my job has changed really substantially. The people who are coming up who are younger than me, absolutely see that there are many tools to do the job. Often I think they feel that they have a slightly different relationship to the theatre community, because they are now able to have that dialogue, and they want to have that dialogue.

**Do you have any for aspiring journalists?**
LG: I think three things probably. In the past, if you wanted to be a journalist, you would send your yellowing cuttings to an editor in the hope that you might get noticed. Now it’s easier to get noticed, so the first thing, definitely start a blog. Second, be around on social media, and actively take part in discussions around you areas that you’re interested in. Get skilled up. Increasingly now journalists have more than one string to their bow, as we’re moving towards self publishing absolutely you should be able to sub – not only your own work but other people’s work – and have all the skills that are necessary to do that.
You need to have more than one string to your bow. I think it was possible when I started out as a theatre critic, to say ‘I would like to be a theatre critic’ and actually along the way I did do some other things – a bit of film criticism, a bit of food.
But I think it’s even more important now, particularly in Arts journalism, those people who are as happy and easy in the world of art and pop music as they are in theatre, basically those who are able to cover more than one art from. Increasingly because I think that those forms are coming together, we’re getting hybrid art forms, those are the best placed – better than those who are only interested in theatre.