"We’re seeing it in all the popular arts, (with) papers cutting back on movie and rock music critics," [Gail Shister] says. "It’s mind-boggling. In my experience, readers have a virtually insatiable appetite for any news about television. If there’s one beat that’s sacrosanct, it should be TV."
If Gail Shister believed what she was saying, she’d quit her job as a metro reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and start her own website about TV. But the odds are tiny that she’d be able to make a living from that because, contrary to what she tells Variety, there’s not much economic demand for her TV work. If there were, her newspaper wouldn’t be switching her from that beat.
