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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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Critic's Corner Discuss a review. Provide constructive feedback. Talk to the industry. |
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In Reply to: For the most part, I agree... posted by uw312@aol.com on May 22, 2004 at 14:54:22:
"You mean, reviewers only review products that they already know they like, or that everyone else says they like. Jeepers!"Right. If I didn't like the product or find it does something new or worthwhile, I had a hard time writing about it. If the product is highly regarded or has been positively reviewed, and I find problems or negative qualities that were overlooked, then I would want to write up the negative stuff.
"If you were reluctant to write a negative review (or, conversely, predisposed to writing a positive review) then you simply weren't doing your job. A reviewer in my opinion shouldnt base his review on how one person out of a thousand potential users MIGHT feel about it, nor do I think a reviewer should worry about what might happen to a company for fear of telling the truth."
My job was to write reviews that are truthful and objective as possible about audio products. I've never written a review where I didn't criticise some aspect of a product's performance - after all there is no such thing as audio perfection - at least not yet. So while an overall review may be positive, there are always negative parts. It's just that I wasn't usually interested in writing about products that I felt 80 or 90% negative about. I didn't think the readers would be interested either.
"I'm not suggesting there is some big conspiracy, I just think that as long as a magazine is largely funded by the companies whose products get reviewed, reviewers are going to cop out, the way you mentioned you did. Consumer Reports doesnt seem to be offended when they rate a product as inferior and their testers / reviewers are free to be truthful."So, do you find Consumer Reports' reviews of, say, loudspeakers, more useful than those in the audio review publications? Seldom do the audio publications go to the trouble of reporting on a large survey of say, 10 different $5000 loudspeakers. If they did, some would be rated as inferior. Of those 10 loudspeakers, which would you rather read extensive reviews of - the top 2 or the bottom 2? Iknow I would much rather write about the best ones, and if you consider that a cop out, so be it.
Regards,
Mike
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Follow Ups
- Re: The reviewer's job.... - mkuller 10:48:23 05/26/04 (0)
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