Dave Kehr reports (via Radar) that after 30 years, David Ansen (below right) is leaving Newsweek, taking a handsome buy-out offered to him by the magazine. Hard times have befallen the newsweeklies, with cost-cutting moves common. Ansen told Anne Thompson that “It was a good deal . . . They didn’t want me to leave, which put me in a nice bargaining position.” Unlike most of the other 110 staffers who took the deal, Ansen will stay until the end of the year reviewing films, then an additional year as a contributing editor.

The departure of Ansen marks a growing concern that the professional, in-print film critic is an endangered species. Writes Thompson:

The current harsh publishing climate has been hard on film critics. Gone from newspaper staff reviewer ranks are The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaum, Newsday’s John Anderson, The Village Voice’s Nathan Lee, The New York Daily News’ Jami Bernard and Jack Mathews, The Chicago Tribune’s Michael Wilmington and The Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Eleanor Ringel Gillespie. Some have retired and some have been pushed out. “It is scary; they’re letting a lot of good people go these days,” said Ansen. “It’s like a return to the hard old days when I was growing up when anybody could be a movie critic, and they’d take somebody off the sports desk.”

I well remember Ansen’s reviews — back when we subscribed to Newsweek, that is. And the past-tense “subscribed” is the key. I no longer subscribe to Newsweek or any other newsweekly in large part because I can read high-quality, professional criticism — and news and sports and opinion — for free, on the World Wide Web. Not to mention the scads of fair-to-middlin’ to very good amateur critics and bloggers.

What bigger disincentive to pay for something than the fact that you can get it without charge? Not a particularly robust business model.

[There's a great ongoing discussion of this over at Scanners]