I’m not dead yet….

And last night, under the auspices of Young People in the Arts (ypia), a network set up in May 2009 to bring together people at the outset of their careers in the arts, I took part in a panel debate on the future of theatre criticism that went under the provocative title “Is the Theatre Critic Dead?”, with freelance writer Nancy Groves chairing a panel that also featured The Guardian’s Lyn Gardner, young blogger and critic Matt Trueman and the West End Whingers Andrew and Phil.

It’s an oft-debated subject, not least on this blog and amongst the ranks of the Critics’ Circle, where we sometimes fret about our collective futures in a world of dwindling paid outlets. But there are also more opportunities than ever to write, and for the younger aspiring critic - watching an older generation steadfastly digging its heels in and refusing to go (and why should they? It’s a dream of a job and who would want to give it up!) - they no longer have to wait for us to fall off our perches, as someone inelegantly expressed it last night about Michael Billington’s 40-something year tenure at The Guardian.

Whether we fall off those perches or are pushed or climb down gracefully of our own accord, they’re not as stable as they once were anyway; but as Lyn Gardner (who has been on The Guardian for nearly 20 years) suggested last night, though the internet has been bad for print, it’s been good for journalism. It’s both expanded the outlets and range of voices that can be heard, from traditional paid media and free papers and magazines to websites, blogs and even twitter (it was revealing that all five of last night’s panellists now tweet).

This has also meant welcome changes, too, in the balance of power we exercise as critics: we’re now part of a dialogue and a conversation with our readers as never before, who will post replies to our blogs and comments to our reviews (though it was interestingly pointed out that readers have been slower to engage with the latter possibility that The Guardian recently introduced than the former; perhaps blogging has more of an informality about it, whereas reviews are still being regarded with more of a sense of authority that readers are nervous to challenge).

But as the new territory is being carved out between different voices, some territorial wars have started erupting. Matt Trueman - blogger, critic and also an “inside man” by day as he works for a leading theatrical agency - recently released a firestorm on The Guardian website with a blog that asked for more respect to be shown towards the theatrical process by asking that bloggers refrain from reviewing previews. It was a nice try at restoring an idealistic order, but the fact is that the genie is now out of the box and no one is going to put it back in.

Bloggers acquire some of their power - and competitive advantage - from beating the critics who still wait patiently until press night before expressing their opinions. But it’s only a short-term edge that is maintained; the moment the reviews appear, they still achieve a wider currency than most blogs do.

But not everything, of course, is reviewed: as I’ve often pointed out here, there is such a wealth of product all over London, not to mention the UK, that we simply cannot get to everything. And while Lyn Gardner rightly pointed out that one of the problems amongst national critics is that we tend to follow each other nose-to-tail around the same shows, there are lots of gaps to be filled by diligent bloggers. There may be more outlets than ever, but if bloggers also follow the same circuit, we are only getting more opinions on the same shows.

The young, of course, are always our future; and as long as groups like YPIA are debating matters like this, it seems that, like the character in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (and subsequently reprised in Spamalot on stage), critics will be shouting out, “I’m not dead yet!” even as some people are trying to load our corpses onto the cart.