John Simon Lands Jobs at Bloomberg.com, Weekly Standard

John Simon, the 80-year-old critic who was let go by New York magazine earlier this month after a 37-year career there, has found two new writing gigs: a weekly review column on Bloomberg.com and a monthly essay in The Weekly Standard.

Simon’s Bloomberg column will appear every Friday, beginning sometime in June; he says that it will be very similar to his New York column, focusing on both Broadway and Off-Broadway shows. “I’ve been told the average word count is 750 words,” Simon told TheaterMania, “but they are giving me the freedom to write longer if I need it.” He isn’t sure what the initial column will cover, but it most likely won’t include a review of the first new show of the 2005-2006 Broadway season: Elaine May’s After the Night and the Music. “I have seen it, but I went as a ‘civilian’ and I think you see things differently when you see a play as critic,” Simon says. “However, my feeling is a critic should see things as a human being and a critic, and a human being should see things as a critic and a human being.”

His monthly column for The Weekly Standard will be a ‘think piece” about the arts. “It will probably lean slightly towards theater, but it might also include film,” he says. “I do occasionally miss writing about a good movie.”

Simon’s replacement at New York is Jeremy McCarter, who until recently was the drama critic for the New York Sun. A 1998 graduate of Harvard University, McCarter is expected to file his first column next month.