Does a lack of editorial oversight diminish the quality of a review?

In perusing a multitude of reviews over the past couple weeks I’ve noticed that those from websites and cyber-zines and blogs seem to be more lacking than those from established print publications. Not always, of course, those publications that try to review EVERYTHING seem to bleed quality after a while – the LA Weekly comes to mind – but for the most part, established professional print publications churn out higher quality reviews than those on the web.

Obviously, being paid to write a review is going to demand more from an individual than just writing a review out of love of the theatre, or personal exposure, or just plain narcissistic yearnings, but what else is the “web review” lacking?

Editorial oversight.

Now what does this mean? One of the definitions of “edit” in the dictionary says “to prepare for publication”. I find this to be very enlightening. There is a sense of preparing something for presentation to the public in this definition. We don’t go the opera in pajamas. We don’t go meet our significant other’s parents for the first time in a wife-beater (if we want to keep seeing them.) We don’t tell the boss EXACTLY what is on our minds every time. We “edit” ourselves.

This is not something the web does well. YouTube is the perfect example of this. Anything goes on YouTube. Which is why we are both drawn to it and in many ways repulsed. There is almost no editorial process with the site – except for violence and pornography of course. The videos that usually get the most hits are one of two kinds, the freakiest and most novel, or the higher quality ones. We tend to “edit” on our own with YouTube.

Now back to reviews. Publications, for the most part, have a series of editors – usually people who are more experienced in the field – who look over everything that is going to be printed. Sometimes several editors will look over each piece, offering suggestions, cuts, revisions, additions, etc…They are preparing the article, or in our case, the review, to be presented to the public. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well sometimes it can hurt something – I wrote for Marvel comics for a period of time and the editorial process certainly “dumbed down” much of what I was trying to accomplish. This often happens on TV as well. But that’s a whole ‘nother subject. But for the most part, I believe, the editorial process forces a writer to demand more from themselves, to learn how to say more in less time, to get to the point, to HAVE a point, to stand out, to distinguish themselves from the others, to bring quality to their work.

The web, to a great extent, lacks this element. And it shows. This is often a result of the “one-man show” syndrome. The site is run, managed, written by one person. So it’s just an opinion site. This of course is fine, democratic, allows for personal expression and original voices to emerge, but in most cases these sites lack the mechanisms that FORCE quality on a writer.

As a playwright I work in a world of solitude. And at a certain point in my process I can longer distinguish what’s funny or moving or what’s been overwritten or underwritten and I have to releash my play to my “circle of advisors”. It’s both a frightening and thrilling time, but in the end it always improves my play. I’ve never had the opportunity to work with an actual professional Dramaturge. I imagine it would be incredibly exciting and incredibly frustrating.

So you web-reviewers? Who’s taking you to task? Or is that the point? Like YouTube, will the better quality sites find the audience and the others just fade away?

It’s a little ironic that I’m posting this on a new blog site, isn’t it?