How To Become A Critic: What It Is and Career Path

What is a critic and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

A critic is someone who critically evaluates works of art. They can specialize in various art forms, from books to movies and even restaurants (food is a way for chefs to express creativity, after all). A good critic does much more than just share if they think a piece of art is good or bad. They analyze the themes in a work, evaluate the author's technique, and sometimes talk about how a book or movie relates to other works of art.

While traditionally critics worked as columnists for newspapers, the job market is changing rapidly. Now, many critics are freelance writers, work for broadcast television, or even have their own sites where they self-publish their critiques.

A successful critic first needs to know a lot about the art field that they are looking to criticize. They also need to be strong writers in order to communicate their ideas to an audience. That is why many critics have bachelor's degrees in journalism, media studies, or a related field. Most critics earn similar salaries to journalists, about $31,091 a year, although very famous critics can make much more than that.

ScoreCriticUS Average

Salary

4.1

Avg. Salary $52,101

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.3

Growth rate -10%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

5.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.29%

Asian 9.73%

Black or African American 6.43%

Hispanic or Latino 12.74%

Unknown 4.39%

White 66.42%

Gender

female 36.74%

male 63.26%

Age - 38

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 38

Stress level

7.3

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

9.1

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

2.1

Work life balance is very poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a critic

Explore critic education requirements

Most common critic degrees

Bachelor's

69.7 %

Master's

16.7 %

Associate

7.1 %

Start to develop specific critic skills

Skills	Percentages
Architecture	29.35%
Press Conferences	25.73%
NYC	25.53%
Fiction	19.38%

Complete relevant critic training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New critics learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a critic based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real critic resumes.

Research critic duties and responsibilities

Write essays and reviews of comics, books, films, television programs, music and video games
Create social media and web content (Facebook and HTML) to promote publication and music news.
Show is nationally distribute through PBS.
Supply photography and design logo and brand.

Prepare your critic resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your critic resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a critic resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable critic resume templates

Build a professional critic resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your critic resume.