One of the great things about the Internet is that most newpapers are just a couple clicks away. And most are free. My newspaper of choice is the Sun-Times. It employs some good writers, isn't too tabloid, and isn't owned by an evil corporation bent on destroying any chance the Cubs will ever have to get into the World Series. Of course, Roger Ebert writes for the Sun-Times, although Ebert now has a somewhat separate site for his writing, befitting his popularity and clout. Ebert's movie critic partner Richard Roeper also writes for the newspaper. Roeper is quite inciteful and intelligent as he dissects popular culture in a column that mentions movies a lot less than one might think. Although he does bring up the movies in his Sunday column. I think he's wrong in downplaying the box office slump, but only time will tell which one of us is right.
The best column focusing on movies is James Berardinelli's REELTHOUGHTS. Berardinelli is an interesting character. He began reviewing movies back in the early 1990s, when he would post his reviews to rec.arts.movies.reviews, which I can remember reading back when I was at UofI. He would later receive an endorsement from Ebert, which is no small feat. Eventually Berardinelli started his own site. The commercialization of the Internet arrived a few years ago, although you wouldn't know it from Berardinelli's site. Berardinelli has a job separate from the movies (I think he might have mentioned something about being an engineer), and that is where he derives most of his income. While he has released two books that are compilations of his writings, his website remains non-commercial. I cannot fathom why he wouldn't become a full-time movie reviewer/columnist for some newspaper or magazine. Writing is a lot of work, and surely books sales are not enough to properly compensate him for the effort. Maybe I'm overestimating the money that is available from newspapers and magazines.
