The New York Times is revamping its lineup of arts and entertainment critics — replacing four of the paper’s TV, music and theater critics, who are being offered “new roles,” according to an internal memo obtained by Variety.
The quartet of Times critics — television critic Margaret Lyons, music critic Jon Pareles, theater critic Jesse Green and classical music critic Zach Woolfe — will “be taking on new roles, and we will be conducting a search for critics on their beats in the weeks to come,” New York Times culture editor Sia Michel wrote in a memo to staffers on Tuesday afternoon.
“We are in the midst of an extraordinary moment in American culture. New generations of artists and audiences are bypassing traditional institutions, smartphones have Balkanized fandoms even as they have made culture more widely accessible than ever, and arts institutions are facing challenges and looking for new opportunities,” Michel wrote.
“Our readers are hungry for trusted guides to help them make sense of this complicated landscape, not only through traditional reviews but also with essays, new story forms, videos and experimentation with other platforms,” she wrote in the memo. “Our mission is to be those guides,” she continued. “As we do so, I am making some changes in assignments in the department.”
A rep for the Times confirmed the memo’s authenticity but declined to provide further comment.
Michel joined the Times in 2007 as pop music editor before being promoted to editor of Arts & Leisure. In 2018, she became deputy culture editor and was elevated to her current role in 2023. Prior to the Times, in 2002, she was named editor in chief of Spin, becoming the first woman to edit a major-circulation rock magazine.
In the memo, Michel praised each of the four critics as “best in class, and we are so proud of their excellent body of work.”
Pareles, who has been the chief pop critic at the New York Times since 1988, “has had an unparalleled influence on pop music criticism, expert in a dazzling array of genres,” according to Michel’s memo. Lyons, TV critic at the Times since 2016, “has helped curate television and streaming for readers through her Watching newsletter, with a knack for discovering shows that become sensations,” the memo said.
Green has been the Times’ theater critic since 2017 and “has championed important theater from Broadway and beyond with his incisive, witty reviews,” per the memo. Woolfe, who began writing for the Times in 2011, joined the staff in 2015 as classical music editor and became the classical critic in 2022; he “pioneered the 5 Minutes format and has written elegantly on everything from Maria Callas to Janacek,” per Michel’s memo.
“I know that these are big changes,” Michel wrote in the memo. “While it has long been the practice in the newsroom to shift the roles of reporters, editors and bureau chiefs to bring different ideas and experience to important beats and coverage areas, we’ve done this far less with our roster of critics. But it is important to bring different perspectives to core disciplines as we help our coverage expand beyond the traditional review.”