ABSTRACT
With a strong festival and modest but successful theatrical run, the author had anticipated a lot of press for the film but it had a paltry amount and only ten critics had reviewed the movie. The Project Lodestar surveys showed downward trends in the industry of journalism in general and film journalism, by extension. They also show how these trends will be intertwined with, and negatively affect, small film in a disproportionate way. Every traditional journalist surveyed at a brick and mortar outlet like a magazine, daily newspaper or weekly reported cutbacks in budgets and staff. These outlets typically lay off their film critic and hire them back as a freelancer to pay them per review to cut costs. The cost cuts of the Charlotte daily portended a total shuttering of Creative Loafing in 2019, which leaves Charlotte – listed currently as the 17th largest city in the US – with no full-time film critic.
