Shales and Bark: Where did the love go?

So, some anonymous loser on Howard Mortman's Extreme Mortman blog, weighing in on Washington Post TV critic Tom Shales and his contretemps with his newspaper's media writer Howie Kurtz, writes:

whats the big deal with Tom Shales.  He seems to have an undeserved reputation as a top tv critic and I don’t see it.

I'm not looking for any props from Shales, who's never emailed or conversed with me in 12 years. And I'm certainly not looking to be invited to dinner so I can kiss up to him.  But that reader is smoking something.  To quote the I-man, "the fat boy he can write, can't he?" 

Tom Shales is arguably the greatest TV critic of the past 25 years. His sheer output, his ability to inject point-of-view, his likes, his dislikes, even his peculiar flaws (why he must comment on the weight of every actress and newswoman out there is a mystery to me) ... name one other critic who puts that together in a package, jumbo-sized or otherwised, and makes it so damned compelling year after year.  You can't.  There's a list of one and Shales is it.

Shales has actually increased in my eyes since I became a full-time TV critic.  I had no idea how hard it was to do what he does, and to do it day in and day out for three decades.

It is sad enough that some readers, either because they're too young and don't remember Shales in his prime, or can't see the greatness in his current output, don't give him his due.  But even sadder is the fact that we begin this television season with two veteran TV critics on the sidelines: Shales recently accepted a buyout package from the Post and will now freelance (as "the TV critic," presumably). And the once-great A.H. Belo Corp. is about to unload Ed Bark, whom I consider the dean of American TV critics (along with Dusty Saunders of the Rocky Mountain News) and a founding force of the Television Critics Association, not to mention one of its most beloved members.

Belo, a company founded on great newspapers, now lets its TV-stations tail wag the print dawg. Bark hasn't been allowed to cover Dallas TV (hey, it's only the No. 6 market) because Belo owns WFAA-8, the formerly dominant ABC affil there.

The capper, which many of you read about, came when Belo management conducted self-fulfilling focus groups and decided -- contrary to every trend in the newspaper industry -- that local readers don't care for local arts and entertainment coverage.  And so, practically the entire A&E staff at the Dallas Morning News took buyouts because the head of the paper told them they'd probably be canned if they didn't.

The irony of a company swimming in local TV revenues unloading both its TV critics (Manny Mendoza took a buyout, too) because it didn't think readers were interested in local writing about TV simply requires no comment.

As for Shales going after Kurtz -- and this following on the heels of Tony Kornheiser dumping on fellow Postie Paul Farhi for panning his "Monday Night Football" debut -- these public dustups simply confirm what a lot of journos have heard over the years about the ridiculously cutthroat Washington Post newsroom culture.  Let's play hardball, indeed.