Dan Kennedy reports that the Boston Phoenix has fired longtime theater editor Carolyn Clay as part of the downsizing at just about every publication in the US on newsprint.
I wrote for Clay for several years as a freelance theater critic, and she was a fabulous editor, able to improve my writing without taking anything away from my voice. Her knowledge of theater and the Boston theater scene helped me to look smarter than I really was.
She was also a principled critic with a cheeky sense of humor, as this recent Letters to the Editor exchange shows.
This is obviously a blow for the theater community in Boston, already suffering from cutbacks in coverage at the Boston Globe and the near extinction of coverage on TV.
