It sucks that I'm not a weirdo billionaire because it would be really cool if someone could fund a site with the people forced out and have them just be able to go all out and do what they want. I've grown to look forward to these bylines and it would be nice to see them in one place so I don't have to hunt around. 

Oh maaaaan my honest heartfelt message included a hilarious fuck up.   Well that's what the AV Club deserves, attempted polite gesture but fails anyway.

Aw, thank you! As much as I sometimes jokingly shake my fist at the comments section, it’s been such a crazy and still-novel pleasure to discover people actually read stuff I write and say funny or insightful or tangential or even aggrieved stuff about it! I truly loved writing for this site AND reading it AND jumping…

I HAVE ENJOYED YOUR WORK AND LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU SOON.
NOT IN MY PROFESSIONAL CAPACITY, I SHOULD ADD.

Unfortunately true. I feel like during the switch to Kinja when everyone was saying how this would kill the community, someone on the tech side explicitly told us “you guys represent like, 2% of the site’s traffic.”

True, but these particular assholes report to a private equity group that does not respond well to seeing the value of its holdings diminished by those whims. I can only assume the ad revenue is better from numerous quick-hit clicks than people spending 10 minutes reading a feature and commenting on it multiple times.

I once begrudged your middling reviews and I sought to wonder why. I thought, “What’s this guy’s deal?”, “Is there nothing he likes?”, “Is he a little pretentious?” and so I ultimately wondered “What kind of movie actually affords an A from this guy?”
I had scour through about 2 years of reviews to find about 10 films…

“Everyone seems to be leaving the G/O sites and I can’t blame them.”

Muscle memory is a good way to put it.  Which makes it even more depressing when you pop it open and it’s still the same stories from the previous afternoon.

I assume there’s data supporting that it’s more profitable to run a set of websites as clickbait content aggregators rather than producing actual, thoughtful commentary, or Giz wouldn’t be doing this. Doesn’t mean we have to like it.

This one was just the poster child for a long roster of C+’s that people gave him shit for. Even when the reviews read favorably he’d them stamp them with the C+. Which, if you’re grading on a curve, is above-average.

I mean, nothing will help, but I don’t see how histrionics really hurt at this point. A bunch of talented writers, comprising what remained of the site’s heart and soul, were all unceremoniously laid off—excuse me, “voluntarily” resigned after being instructed to move to L.A. within a couple of months without being…

Doing this job has only strengthened my conviction that most movies are neither great nor terrible but somewhere in between—you know, which is what the C+ fundamentally signifies.

What’s happened to the AV Club is so sad, and I really hope you and all the other talented writers leaving find your feet and keep writing great articles like this elsewhere. I appreciated the lack of A’s because, as you said, if a film got an AA Dowd ‘A’ (or even a B+), I knew it was worth looking out for.

Well, I definitely wasn’t expecting this to make me tear up, yet here we are.

Truly, Jim Spanfeller is a herb.

A door swings open, letting a shaft of light into a cramped but cozy-feeling room. A few old lamps spill pools of yellow on the floor. The walls are lined with tapes, reels, and discs of every kind. Footsteps as a man enters the room.

I always appreciated your reviews and I’m looking forward to reading your stuff elsewhere. Whatever my (myriad) issues with post-disqus AV Club, I thought the film coverage remained excellent and insightful. Disappointed to see yet another talented writer leave as the AV Club hastens its transformation into...I don't…

A+ A+ Dowd. You’ll be missed.

Fwiw, I’m sorry to see you go. It does feel like the passing of an Old Guard (that I, like many around here, am watching with trepidation) and we’re losing even more tried and true talent like yourself. And I can understand where you’re coming from with the grading thing; if you only give an A sparingly, then that A…