Every front page editor knows how important it is to have the right mix of content. Podcasting is one way to find the right balance. Lightening the mix on Election Night, we planned an entertaining podcast from “Word on the Street,” our popular look at what people are talking about in Sarasota.

HeraldTribune.com is proud of its podcasting team, which also includes: “Off the Page,” an interview show by Books Editor Susan Rife, who talks with Florida authors; “Tune Me On,” where readers are introduced to a local band and their music; and, “Real Estate Today,” about trends in the market from Real Estate Editor and blogger Harold Bubil.

HeraldTribune.com is also a leader in video news, posting more than 100 stories per month. Video includes a daily weather forecast from local meteorologists and regularly features extended interviews with newsmakers.

Melissa Worden is the key player in organizing all of the podcasts. We're now hitting the stage where production of these are so regular that they're being handed off to other members of the Web team. Leigh Caldwell and Melissa are both important to the video coverage, with Leigh handling the stories and Melissa handling automation of the workflow and design improvements within our player.

The latest Gallup Poll says everyone hates Katie Couric. Well, not exactly. Everyone hates Couric a little more than they hate Brian Williams and Charlie Gibson.

Not sure what to make of this survey. The likeability of anchors is considered so important to the success of a newscast, that it's obviously bad news for Couric if every demographic of people finds competing anchors more likable.

Still, when it comes down to it, I'm kind of frustrated by the poll.

Part of me suspects powerful women always have higher negative ratings. The culture just doesn't accept them as easily, as naturally. So I want to tell CBS to shirk the polls and rebel against our prejudice.

On the other hand, news is a business. If people don't like Couric as much other anchors, then it's easy to replace her with someone they'll like more.

That same part of me from earlier hates any suggestion that anchors are chosen based on a popularity contest. How fickle and feckless a newscast would become if it depended on being the nice guy. People in this survey actually complained that Gibson gave too much negative news. If CBS is going to replace Couric for high negatives, then the next step is for ABC to report less bad news. Focus more on rainbows and sunshine, Charlie, they'd say.

What this all comes back to is something I've said many times now. CBS must stop boxing Couric into what they define as the evening news and instead create something that truly takes advantage of having the most well known anchor in all of television news.

The survey reports that way more people know Couric than Gibson or Williams. What happened to that old axiom? All news is good news. Its equivalent would be all opinions are good ones.

Katie Couric's strength isn't being well liked, it's being well know. She generates interest, and interest generates viewers. Too bad CBS is afraid of controversy.

CBS killed "Free Speech" when it touched a nerve. They complained about the Michael J. Fox interview because it was controversial. People couldn't stop talking about the John and Elizabeth Edwards interview. That's doing things right, and differently, not wrong.

Everyone talks about the two niches we like: geographic and topical. But there’s a growing third niche that, if you can bear it, should be considered.

The future of news is largely in niches. We all agree on the importance of targeting sections to smaller and smaller communities of people who are united by an interest in a specific location or subject. For example, create a Web site for the politics of immigration and you’ve created a niche site. Or, get microlocal, they say!

Consider another niche: bias. The niche of bias is growing and is probably best known in the form of Fox News Channel. Viewers can choose from a menu of news channels, and conservatives tend to pick Fox. They like Fox because it reports the news from their perspective. Like it or not, Fox is the No. 1 cable news station because they understand the power of bias.

Other networks are following suit. During a 60 Minutes profile, Lou Dobbs said he’s not a fan of President Bush and that his audience should know where he’s coming from. Dobbs calls what he does advocacy journalism. By the way, his ratings are up.

With the exception of Don Imus, the more talk radio hosts share their opinions, the larger their audiences get.

So what does online have to learn from all this? If you’ve got the stomach for it, I recommend starting some biased Web sites. The fact is not all people want their news presented objectively; some want it “fair and balanced.”

One thing I know about best friends: They're not made overnight. That's what struck me so oddly about about this comment, reported by Editor & Publisher:

"We want to be your best friends." That's what Google's Director of Print Ads Tom Phillips said, on behalf of Yahoo and Microsoft also, at an afternoon panel on "partnerships in transition" during the Newspaper Association of America's annual conference here in New York.

The good thing about journalists is we're naturally suspicious of new friends . . .

Though there were many in the room that had partnered with the companies, several executives showed skepticism. "Why do you want to be our friends?" asked one executive.

Why, indeed.

Once upon a time, I knew this guy during high school who no one really liked but everyone was friends with. He had a great car, and kids took advantage of the free ride. Something about these "partnerships in transition" reminds me of that kid.

Yahoo and Google covet the same users as newspapers. Usually that's the definition of a competitor.

Phillips said that Google's core mission is access to information from all "domains." Schneider responded that 115 million people visit Yahoo with a "local intent" -- and Yahoo wants to take its technology infrastructure to help newspapers.

Let's not undervalue a ride in our car. Local information is all we've got. If newspapers plan to share, then they'd better get something in return that's worth losing readers.

I love this idea.

Thanks to Editor & Publisher for pointing out the new "Pop Ed" video blog from Boston.com. Here's how it works: Musician Jake Brennan reads the news each day and then writes a song about it. The final product is basically a rockin' opinion. He then records a music video that's posted online each afternoon.

The first couple installments were worth watching. Today's wasn't a very good song, but something about it is still entertaining. These folks understand what makes for at least one kind of compelling original Web video.

IdolCritic.com is still my favorite Web video show of all time, though. Maybe I'm easily pleased, but I love the heck out of that thing.

First installment

Second installment

For all you folks who like to be in on things early, take note that IBISEYE.com launched a redesign this weekend. The new look for the hurricane tracking site scales back the design even further in favor of a larger map that is more interactive.

Charlie Szymanski and Maurice Tamman worked on this for a long while with a few important goals:

- Speed it up.
- Make it easier to use.
- Integrate better with our Web stats system.

Keep watch for more changes coming for IBISEYE.com even before hurricane season gets started on June 1.

Today’s guests on “Reliable Sources” whined that the sudden attention given to what blowhard/obnoxious hosts say on talk radio is unfair. Blame the Internet, they said.

Radioman Michael Harrison said it’s that pesky Internet’s fault for blaring the host’s words to people never intended to hear them. These mainstream people get offended and then try to “intimidate” mainstream advertisers into dropping support for controversial shows.

The real problem is advertisers want to have their cake and eat it, too. Media programming is increasingly segmented to niche audiences, but not to niche advertisers. Well, that’s an increasingly impossible balancing act.

Here’s a word of warning to advertisers: Don’t expect to be able to buy commercial time on Rush Limbaugh’s show and retain Democratic consumers. That’s not going to fly in the near future. Don’t expect to buy ad time on raunchy XM programming and still convince evangelicals to buy your wares.

Niche programming needs niche advertisers who can withstand the inevitable criticism. Without that level of commitment to a program by advertisers, the show will wither. More importantly, it deserves to whither.

This is economics at its best, people.

Programming note to readers: I leave tomorrow morning for the EPpy awards in Miami. Depending on time and whether there's a WiFi connection, I'll blog what I can of the workshops and speakers.

Looks like I won't be the only one. A group of college students will provide live coverage, as well.

10:45 a.m. -- We're just finishing the introductions to each of the services featured in this session. Presenters include:
Alan Citron, GM for TMZ.com
Ezra Cooperstein, director of development and production for Current TV
David Payne, senior vice president and GM for CNN.com
Matt Melucci, BeliefNet

10:47 a.m. -- Carl from Newsweek (he's moderating, and I didn't catch his name but it very well could be Carl if I remember him correctly) said they took text from students at the scene of Virginia Tech shootings and used to help cover the event. CNN's iReport obviously had the infamous cell phone video from that event.

10:49 a.m. -- How do you screen user-submitted content? Current TV screens everything posted on the Web site using humans. iReport has gotten 27,000 submissions in six months; no word on how they screen. TMZ's user content comes mostly in the form of contents. "People want to talk about virtually everything," says Citron. The comments go into the thousands on the big stories. "Were out of the way and they're talking to each other or arguing with each other." TMZ looks for obscenities, etc. because "you have to." No word on the process used to look for that bad stuff.

10:53 p.m. -- BeliefNet wants to allow what is most interesting of user-submitted content to bubble up by letting the users make the decisions on that.

First prediction! CNN's David Payne says there will be a rating system for people. Everyone wonders about credibility and trust, so how do you open everything up and let people comment and debate and surface things that are actually interesting? Do it by harnessing people's trust. Create super users, who regular users get to know. "That will be the Web 2.5, I think," says Payne.

10:56 a.m. -- Some reporters still wish the Internet would go away, says Citron of TMZ.

10:58 p.m. -- User-submitted content helps the person feel connected to the CNN brand. "We have people who are fans," says Payne.

11 a.m. -- Kids these days. They're walking around with all these media devices built into stuff, and they're learning how to put together content. They're the future. So says Carl from Newsweek.

11:05 a.m. --- Will advertisers shy away from user-submitted content, which is very amateur? Citron says yes, but talks most about advertisers being concerned with the content, not the quality. The Current TV guy says they deal with it mostly by letting advertisers sponsor categories. But Current also invites users to create the ads. Says that's been embraced by advertisers who want to use Current as a "new playground." Payne says it's important to be hyper sensitive to advertisers who are worried about graphic content. But his word to advertisers: Worry more about truly viral sites like YouTube where advertisers never know what to expect from the content. It's not all news, after all.

11:08 a.m. --- A questioner from the audience just used the acronym UGC. Wow, I'm so out of the loop. I've got to start using that.

11:12 a.m. -- Anyone worried about getting fake reports from users? CNN says they've never gotten one. The BeliefNet guy says it's important to make sure users know when they're looking at stuff from the real media organization and those thing from the UGCs. (I'm taking that acronym and using liberally.)

11:15 a.m. -- The whole conversation comes back to Payne's prediction that there will be a user rating system. People will judge each's credibility.

THE END

Hey, they make up the names of these sessions, not me. Attendees include:

Mark Walters, associate publisher for Newsweek.com
Michael Daecher, senior vice president for About.com

11:38 a.m. -- The guy from Newsweek kicks off the session about video by admitting they don't have much video on their site. Wants to equip some of the writers and reporters with video equipment. And he wants to get the Newsweek stars in front of cameras.

11:40 a.m. -- About.com is owned by New York Times, and so is my day-job site. So take what I write with a grain of salt, I suppose. Daecher says what About does is "service journalism." About initially set out create slickly produced, marketing style videos for advertisers and such. But they quickly found it wasn't economically viable to do. Their approach changed after watching David Pogue's video reviews on NYTimes.com.

11:43 a.m. -- A slide on the two gigantic big screens here says About.com has 650 evergreen videos posted now and they expect to exceed 1,500 by 2008.

11:44 a.m. -- About.com gathered a group of people who were comfortable in front of the camera and used them across the site. The About guy claims they were one of the first sites to embed the video directly into their guides pages. (They use Brightcove as video vendor.) Daecher says embedding videos made it easier for them to be found via search, which is, of course, About.com's bread and butter.

11:47 a.m. -- Don't just replace your text with video, says the About guy. Be sure the things you're making video about are visual tasks. Example: How to change a tire, or learn a yoga position. Wouldn't it be entertaining to combine those two videos somehow? I'd watch that.

11:50 a.m. -- Will there be a pay to play model? Or ad supported? The guy from Newsweek says no way on pay to play. Daecher says, "readers aren't saying, I want to go see video. They make a decision about what they want to learn and what they want to see." Point being that people aren't going to pay just to see video. They're looking for information on a topic, not just video on that topic.

11:51 a.m. -- Here's the big question. How successful will video be online? "I see it being big," says Newsweek. But he complains that he sees too many sites deploying video on their sites just for the sake of having video. Not a fan of that, he says. Wants the video to be - go figure - relevant. If that can happen, demand for video will increase. But people are coming for the content, and video has to lend to telling that story. Newsweek agrees with About.

11:54 a.m. -- Newsweek not a fan of the title for the session: "Video killed the text star? Really? I don't know. I think video enhanced the text star."

11:55 a.m. -- "We didn't have a budget for this. We didn't have a studio." So Newsweek went out and bought some AP video that they, too, embed on the page. The Newsweek guy also thought he was the first in the world to do it. Go figure.

11:57 a.m. -- Newsweek says the AP video was the first step, but now they create a lot of their own video. Putting Newsweek personalities on camera a lot more often now. So apparently they are doing that already. "We started small and just continued to try a couple things and watched the traffic."

Noon -- Video is not difficult to produce with today's much simplified and cheaper equipment. So says About. At least, it's easy once you drop the idea that it's going to be slick. "Readers don't really care if it's slick. They just want the point."

12:02 p.m. -- The guy from About says video explaining how to do the downward dog yoga position is really popular. Not in my house, it isn't.

12:03 p.m. -- Will we all just have video cameras and carry them around in our everyday lives? Newsweek guy starts his answer with a laugh. So, in short, no. "I think we're a long way away from that." The guy from About says he doesn't think the world of content will ever become entirely user generated.

12:08 p.m. -- Newsweek uses its printed page to refer folks to video online. As long as the video is compelling, he says it will increasingly be mentioned in the printed pages. But that's the only change anyone should expect to the printed product as a result of increased video online. Emotion can be shown in video better than it can in print, and that might be the first place where it has an affect on text content.

12:10 p.m. -- Uh oh, video success brings the question of product placement. An example from About: The business side wants to put a Black & Decker skillsaw in your how-to videos. About just says no to that idea because they're uncomfortable with the ethical implications. "Setting those standards within your organization upfront is very important because there's going to be that pressure from the clients to get their products in your videos," says Daecher.

12:13 p.m. -- How long does it take to post video? A week! That's what the guy from About says. They go through several edits before posting. At Newsweek, it's a week to 10 days depending on where their shooters are being sent.

12:15 p.m. -- Audience questioner says advertisers want advertorial. About's guy says it's troubling when advertorial isn't labeled well enough and separated from the rest of the content. A good indicator that the labeling is blurry is how hard the user has to look to figure out the source. "Advertisers are starting to get their way in ways they would not have a few years ago," Daecher says. The Newsweek guy says they do zero advertorial: "I can't even picture being in front of editors talking to them about that."

12:17 p.m. -- A questioner asks: Considering the lead time it takes to make video, then how do you pick the right stories to cover? The Newsweek guy says editors decide, but sometimes make controversial choices. "What the hell did we do that for?" he says he sometimes wonders. But, the traffic often proves his idea of story selection wrong. Bottomline: Defer to the editors.

12:21 p.m. -- A questioner says there's a huge push where she works to post video. But the ad side isn't rushing as quickly as she is to get video online. Why? About says it could be a learning curve. Newsweek says once the ad staff understands all the terminology, they'll be aggressive with selling it. They have to be ready to answer advertisers' questions, and if they're not prepared for the questions, then they probably won't talk about video ads at all.

THE END

Breakout session time. My other choice was to learn about the projects that won the Knight Foundation's grant money.

Presenters include:
Raul Lopez, GM for Miami Herald Online
Gail Griffin, GM for Wall Street Journal Online
Perry Solomon, senior director for FAST
Mitch McKinnon, account director for Scarborough Research

2:32 p.m. -- Lopez says there are 200 employees on the ad side at the Miami Herald, and each one will be required to complete a six-hour training about online, starting with "what is a pixel." On the news side, they've found that the best way to integrate was embedding their small group of online journalists within the newsroom. Today, Lopez says there is a less of a line. "We consider the Web site our first edition . . . Everyone in the newsroom is more engaged."

2:35 p.m. -- WSJ fully integrated the circulation of print and online about a year ago. Before, they had two separate P&Ls.;

2:38 p.m. -- Solomon says newspaper Web sites need to think beyond classifieds and become more of a player in things such as video advertising and yellow pages. Be a local prescence aggregating local content.

2:40 p.m. -- How do you define your brand online compared to the Web? Breaking news. The Miami Herald, which had struck down the miami.com Web site as its default home and went back to MiamiHerald.com, is planning to relaunch Miami.com as something entirely new and different from what it had been. Apparently users still thought of the old miami.com site as being from The Herald.

2:42 p.m. -- Solomon is still on the idea that newspapers need to be more than the online version of the newspaper. He cites Schibsted as a good example because they provide a lot of search content at sesam. Let's not forget Solomon works for a search vendor and sesam is one of his clients.

2:45 p.m. -- Lopez says the integration of the newsroom with online really kicked off with the idea that the Web site is the first edition of the newspaper. A team starts at 5 a.m. in the newsroom and in the field to chase down local news stories and file immediately. They're also planning a reorganization that will make them more of a 24-hour news service. Sounds like someone will be working very late. Or early.

2:48 p.m. -- Griffin says the newsroom gets how important the Web is for WSJ. "If they don't understand it, at least on some basic level, it's not going to be good for them."

2:50 p.m. -- Are you more involved with the editorial or sales part of your group? And are the demands for profits a factor in your daily decisions?

Lopez says he's responsible for the overall site, and he grew up in sales, so he ends up being mostly involved on that side. The news content on The Herald's site is decided by the newsroom. The business side, though, has more influence over what the site is going to look like, where classifieds are located, and whether an intrusive ad is going to be used.

Griffin says she spends a lot of time negotiating between the sales side, news side and ciculation. "If we don't work together very seamlessly all of the time, then we're not going to be able to grow our business the way we need to." Does it influence your decision making? No, but it definitely influences "my day to day quality of life" Griffin says to laughs.

2:55 p.m. -- Griffin recommends building Web expertise within your staff before deciding just to combine all of the staffs into one. "We like to joke about hostile takeovers of online divisions by print." Can be tricky stuff if there's a general lack of experience. She cites sales staffs specifically.

2:57 p.m. -- As far as users go, WSJ is trying to convince readers of the newspaper to also use the site. Focusing on the benefits of using both is built into their marketing and strategy.

3 p.m. -- Griffin says 15 percent of online subscribers at WSJ are from educational institutions. Not sure if that's part of a program or just coincidental. They're making some of their non-core coverage free as a way to attract younger and less frequent readers.

3:02 p.m. -- Lopez says they use coverage of high school sports as a way to attract the younger reader, but it's a challenge. "We will do a lot more in that area," he said. "We think it's a place that's passionate and people care about. We think it's a battleground that we have a chance to make a run at."

3:05 p.m. -- Prediction. Griffin says print will become more in depth and analytical and less about breaking news. The understanding at WSJ is the Web site is the place to break news, not the newspaper.

3:09 p.m. -- Are you seeing declines in circulation as the same rate as smaller newspapers? Nope, the larger the more they lose circulation, according to McKinnon. He attributes the declines much to the faster lifestyles of readers in major metros compared to rural areas.

3:10 p.m. -- Audience questioner wonders whether cuts to the newsroom are being camouflaged by changes in structure and staffing on Web sites. Panel basically said no. But I thought it was telling to show the suspicions of some folks.

3:12 p.m. -- Has the WSJ's new coverage of the business of life changed who is reading their newspaper and Web site, a questioner asks. Not really, says Griffin. She hopes that making the content free will make it easier to attract the traffic needed to sell advertisers into it. That's probably the only negative thing she's said about the paid wall. Otherwise, she's said repeatedly that the paid model is beneficial and helped the newsroom and sales integrate with online.

3:18 p.m. -- Should newspapers be creating new online brands? McKinnon says he's found that newspapers are abandoning their brands too quickly. "(Newspapers) realized afterward that they should have had more faith in their legacy product to begin with." Newspaper brands are strong in local markets, and should be used as much as possible, McKinnon says.

THE END

Events kick off with Rusty Coats being introduced as director of tbd.com. Oh aren't we all? He's actually the head of TBO.com out of Tampa.

Other presenters include:
Jim Debth, former GM for Austin American-Statesman Online. (austin360.com, statesman.com)
Patrick Steigman, ESPN.com
Andrea Lynn, multimedia director for Naples Daily News

4:45 p.m. -- Rusty starts with the story of stone soup, in which a stew grows from a simple rock and water to one filled with all kinds of veggies as each person contributes, creating a better and better stew. Mmm, yummy metaphor for user-submitted content, right?

4:50 p.m. -- Tampa's got one of those user-submitted Spotted sites from Morris that they call "Snap." The thing that got the newspaper staff involved was using it with a big Tampa festival called Gasparilla. From the time it took to post a photo to the site and then write a caption for it, there were already 16 to 18 page views for the photo. The egos of photogs really benefit from that instant feedback. So now they love love love to upload. The Snap section got 2.7 million page views in January 2007.

4:56 p.m. -- Tampa made a staff change in October that put all of the weeklies reporting to the online division. What do staff at weeklies and Web sites have in common? "We've all been shit on for a long time," Rusty says. In other words, they're all used to having to do multiple, multiple, multiple jobs. The new Web sites for the community papers are handled directly by the weeklies' staffs. And the weekly staffs post stories throughout the week, as they happen, instead of waiting for ink to hit paper.

5:05 p.m. -- Jim Debth, who now works as a consultant, What is storytelling of the future? He says a story is now text, photo, videos and interactives, Debth calls it News 2.0. That's our second wacky version reference of the conference. (Though there have been many more that I haven't mentioned, believe me.)

5:15 p.m. -- A photo gallery for dogs generated 800 user submissions and more than a million and a half page views. Debth recommends the dog gallery.

5:15 p.m. -- Soundcheck 360 is pretty cool. It's basically one player where clips for local bands are kept in one location. Nice one, Debth.

5:17 p.m. -- Funny name for a quiz about religion. "Test your faith." Clever, Debth.

5:18 p.m. -- The end of Debth's show: "Storytelling of the future? It's now." I actually think that's an important mindset. Stop waiting for the future. It's now.

5:20 p.m. -- ESPN's Steigman has a good way of looking at constant updating: We want to be the first to break the news, the first to react to the news and the first to react to the reaction to the news.

5:25 p.m. -- NBA mock draft, trade machine and fake lottery are all cool tools. Page views surpassed 30 million on the fake lotto. Hard to put that in context since we're talking about gigantic ESPN, but interesting. They basically told the news story via a game. Nice way to learn.

5:35 p.m. -- I'm not a big sports fan, so I didn't know ESPN has its own "pod center" that Steigman says is huge for them.

5:36 p.m. -- They've hired several reporters as full-time bloggers. These people don't write columns, or stories, etc. All they do is blog. "The reaction from our users has been tremendous," Steigman says.

5:37 p.m. -- I've got to pay more attention to ESPN. They do polls, just like everyone else. But then they break the poll results down state by state. It's treating sports with the importance of a major election.

5:40 p.m. -- Andrea Lynn decides to shirk the big screen presentations (the ones all three folks ahead of her did) and instead talks from her seat. It's her effort to be a good storyteller, she explains. The story is Studio 55, a Webcast she says helps the community tell its story. Right now, Studio 55 is appointment viewing, but she said It will grow to be "information at the speed of life." Everyone knows Studio 55, right? OK.

5:48 p.m. -- Rusty asks Andrea Lynn what they find to be the most popular feature on the Naples site. Her answer, as many folks have been saying today, is breaking news. Whatever the topic of the day, it's popular across all the mediums, whether in comments, in stories, video, etc.

5:51 p.m. -- "Get right with God and your legal counsel about this," Rusty warns about reverse publishing user-submitted content. You have free legal reign to let users post online whatever they'd like, but once it gets printed, then the publisher becomes liable. I think most people know that, but you never know. The rate of return on racks for Tampa's new mostly-user-submitted weeklies has dropped since the launch. That's usually a good indicator of success in the print world.

THE END

The EPpy winners were announced during a luncheon yesterday, and sadly HeraldTribune.com was not one of them. C'est la vie.

Congratulations to the winners. HeraldTribune.com was beaten by:

• Best Overall Web site under 1 million unique visitors: BoomerGirl.com, which I commented on when it launched.
• Best news service under 1 million unique visitors: asap, the youth-targeted project from the Associated Press.

I've got some notes and thought on Friday's sessions that I'll try to jot down this weekend. Keep posted.

Oftentimes a moment happens early on in a movie that, if you're paying attention, tips the viewer off to what's about to happen. It's called foreshadowing, and it's one of my favorite games to play while watching a movie or reading a book. Or, analyzing the journalism industry.

A few months ago, I warned everyone that what appeared to be a single event in one newspaper market was actually one of those harbingers of things to come. The movie critic got laid off.

Now many movie critics have been laid off. Thanks to Will Hartnett for reminding us all of a trend that is still, I think, in its early stages.

Beats must become more local, less replaceable by wire copy. Or they will be cut.

Movie critic and blogger Rene Rodriguez laments the loss of fellow critics, calling it a mistake that erodes the quality of cultural discourse. Well, that's a bit much for me. Maybe if every movie critic in the world were fired, or if we got down to just those thumbs up and down guys. Maybe then cultural discourse would suffer.

We don't need hundreds of paid movie critics, especially when every Joe Schmoe has an opinion and doesn't mind sharing it via community-driven Web sites.

Criticism in general is going away, if all it attempts to do is tell the masses whether something on a national scale is worth watching. That job-to-be-done can be replaced with crowdsourcing in the form of a Netflix-like ratings system.

Or, let's go in the opposite direction. The movies I like are often hated by the guy next to me. So having one movie critic for both of us just doesn't work in today's ever personalized world of content. That's why Netflix has a recommendation engine.

All hope is not lost, though. An expert movie critic who does contribute to "cultural discourse" will remain. The highbrow critics - the few who are a real authority on what makes good acting, filming, screenwriting and editing - will outlast the others because they play to a niche market.