Jeremy Gerard, a prolific and widely read arts reporter and critic, was laid off by Deadline.com two years and two months after the news outlet hired him to oversee its expansion of New York media and theater coverage .
Gerard, who was executive editor and chief theater columnist, said in an email that he was told that Deadline.com, otherwise known as Deadline Hollywood, is focusing resources on film and television coverage. Mike Fleming Jr., co-editor in chief, didn’t return an email. Gerard said: “I have loved working at Deadline and will miss my great colleagues there.”
Gerard has written about the performing arts for four decades. He was the Broadway reporter for the New York Times, where he covered the impact on the arts world of the AIDS epidemic, among many other topics. He was chief drama critic for the Dallas Morning News and Variety, and columnist and reviewer for New York magazine and the now-defunct Soho Weekly News. (He was also a colleague of mine at Bloomberg News, until it eliminated daily arts coverage, in November 2013.) He’s the author of two books, most recently, Wynn Place Show, about Wynn Handman, the co-founder and artistic director of the influential American Place Theatre.
At Deadline, while editing others’ work and writing as many as half-dozen posts a day, he regularly broke news about the business, including about the finances of Hamilton and air rights over Broadway theaters. Said Rick Miramontez, a press agent with DKC/O&M: “Wherever Jeremy lands, we all know he will remain one of the deans of industry reporting.”
Matt Windman, author of the new book The Critics Say…, featuring interviews with theater critics and reporters, several of whom have gone from full-time to freelance, said writers were heartened when Deadline hired Gerard. “Here was a guy with tons of experience and knowledge being brought on to a mainstream online publication, and he gave theater (both Broadway and Off-Broadway) a great amount of attention, and he performed the kind of in-depth investigative reporting and interviewing that so many other critics who dabble in reporting and features don’t have time for.”
