Criticism and Rufinatscha

[Alan Howe]

Well done on sticking to your principles...

[Ilja]

But to be fair, that's not really reviewing, is it? Nor is it, I think, very useful to the reader to have only glowing reviews and nothing to differentiate the performances.

There's no problem in being (even highly) critical in a review. My personal yardstick has always been that I needed to be able to make a constructive point in the review, be it negative or positive. The aim is always to help the reader in determining which concerts to visit, to give a little bit of guidance, however subjective.

[Alan Howe]

I think there are two separate points here. It seems our American friend was asked to write reviews but, when he wrote what he honestly thought, he was fired. Pretty straightforward.

The second point is the apparently severe difficulty that many people have in perceiving any form of negative comment as capable of being constructive. Of course, it is possible to be entirely destructive in a review, which is not particularly helpful, but many people perceive anything negative by definition as destructive, which is simply nonsensical. 

[jerfilm]

Ilja is correct on this point, though - they didn't want reviews, they just wanted a nice story which they thought would help sell season tickets next year..... but such stories are pretty blah and who wants to read them?

Jerry

[Alan Howe]

Quite so, but did you know that before you submitted your review?

[JimL]

Ilja is correct on this point, though - they didn't want reviews, they just wanted a nice story which they thought would help sell season tickets next year..... but such stories are pretty blah and who wants to read them?

This doesn't make sense.  Why would they want nice stories to improve ticket sales, then fire you for providing them for nothing?  This kind of goes against your first post on the subject. 

[jerfilm]

No, they asked for "reviews" but I guess they didn't want critical reviews.

No, Jim, everything I said was not glowing.  What's the point of simply listing what was played, how many people were there despite the snow and wind chill, etc. etc...?

Jerry