We’ve just spent a good part of the summer listening to play-by-play announcers and color commentators covering the FIFA World Cup. Because Americans know so little about that kind of football, we raptly listened to every word, trusting that the announcers and analysts were incisive and accurate.

Compare that to how we listen to American football. Avid fans deride play- by-play announcers for missed or erroneous calls. We’re outraged at the color commentators’ insights, predictions, and judgments—or we’re validated (That’s what I just said!). When we think we know what we’re seeing, we do not always believe what we’re hearing. After playing and coaching football for more than a decade, when I begin watching NFL games next month, I’ll turn off the sound.

This is about where our culture is with architectural criticism. We no longer listen to the play-by-play or color commentators; instead, we’re all directly watching the game on the internet. Back in the 20th century I was published as both a designer and a writer, straddling the great divide between those who build and those who evaluate what is built. But this was no Golden Age. The mainstream outlets were relatively few in number, and what was published and what was rejected could be as arbitrarily determined and merit-free as any current website.

That ecosystem began to unravel in 2008: the Great Recession crippled a print media industry already fated for dramatic change. Walter Cronkite left the building in 1981. As with his cultural dominance, in architecture there will likely never be another Ada Louis Huxtable or Lewis Mumford. Architectural careers are no longer made—or broken—by a single critic’s outsized voice on a vaunted media platform. Today, there are influencers, websites, podcasts, and Substacks, many many in number but diffuse in impact. (Almost inexplicably—perhaps to stand out from the crowd and point up the ephemerality of the current media landscape—a few print-first efforts  have popped up, notably The New York Review of Architecture.) 

For architects, the old system of editorial approval and rejection is now barely visible, while its replacement is a chattering sea of “content,” some of it quite good, some of it quite bad, more it than ever, but all of it vying for our precious attention. Despite my analog roots, I participate in this not-so-new-world, without spending a cent for promotion, placement, or pay-for-play. I regularly write for Common Edge. I also have a blog and host a podcast and radio show, with all the attendant Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook postings. Our firm has a website and sends out regular email blasts. When asked, I give Zoom talks. I’m active in religious commentary and expression. All told, I estimate that these efforts reach roughly 350,000 people a year. 

To what end? In the last month I was commissioned by someone who saw my name referenced on a random Facebook page. Yesterday, I met with a group of Christians who found me by asking an AI search for a “Christian architect.” Others Google me, not by name, but by my location; this happens often enough that I set up this page. This month, several people found me this way, which might result in perhaps one or two opportunities.

I am an architect, who helps make things, and I write about architects who make things…It’s a unique and sometimes awkward position, tinged with a conflicting mix of empathy and cynicism.

What does all this have to do with architectural journalism and criticism? Well, I am an architect, who helps make things, and I write about architects who make things. While I’m on the field, so to speak, I’m also trying to provide perspective. It’s a unique and sometimes awkward position, tinged with a conflicting mix of empathy and cynicism. But I know that the masses are speaking louder every day. In politics, popular culture, and world events, there are now instant universal feedback loops, without editors or curators.

Today, everyone in the arena is a player and a commentator—anyone with a smart phone and an Instagram account. Everyone can see the sausage being made, not just read the review of how it tastes to one diner. In 1994, just before the internet broke wide, a single article on our firm, appearing on the front page of the New York Times Home Section, generated 600 calls, letters, and then emails over the next decade. Those contacts generated 40 completed projects. I physically visited more than 300 places over that decade to talk to people who contacted me because of that one article.

This will never again happen for anyone. A writer anointed me. (Thank you, Tracie Rozhon.) It mattered. It mattered because there was no other way for me to introduce myself. Now every architect is speed-dated indirectly on the internet before we ever meet our clients. No commentator, no paper needed.

Featured image: Ada Louise Huxtable, with New York Times Publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, in 1970, when she won the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. Photo by Librado Romero.