Every Friday morning as I sit down to my desk at work, I grab a copy of the Lawrence Journal-World and immediately open it up to the Pulse section to see Jon Niccum’s newest movie review. Part of the great thing about having a local paper is getting to know your local movie critic’s tastes, and after five years in Lawrence, I feel like I know Niccum’s pretty well. For the past three weekends, though, the Journal-World’s entertainment editor and local film critic has not had a new review appear in the paper. In their place are “piped-in” reviews from the Associated Press wire. When I contacted him, managing editor Dennis Anderson declined to speak on the record about the absence of Niccum’s movie reviews.I like the opinions that I read to be attached to someone with accountability, not some faceless critic from Miami or Orlando who works for another paper, and may or may be not printed again the following week. When I grew up in Kansas City, I read Robert W. Butler from the Kansas City Star every week. As with Niccum, I don’t always agree with him, but I loved reading his articles because I was gaining a perspective. Because I was a regular reader, I knew where his opinions were coming from, and used that as a barometer for whether or not I wanted to spend money seeing a film. I would also re-read them after seeing the film and compare my opinions with his.Niccum has been doing this a long time, and he has earned the right to have a regular voice in the Journal-World. I believe that a local slant is important, and that is absolutely why he should be able to continue writing movie reviews. Just because the films he reviews are not made locally does not mean that there isn’t a local slant to his writing. The media affects everybody differently, depending on where they live. There is something to be said for geography, and every time I read a Roger Ebert review, I know he is seeing the films in Chicago and writing about them from a Chicagoan perspective.Niccum has huge local ties. He wrote for seven years at The Pitch, for which he was also the music/film editor. He’s been the Journal-World’s entertainment editor for four years, and has been reviewing movies in Lawrence for six. In addition, he has been a member of the Kansas City Film Critic’s Circle since 1994, and its president since 2003. If you look up Niccum’s reviews at RottenTomatoes.com, he’s logged 280 of them. That’s a lot of links on a hugely popular national website that all lead back to Lawrence. Obviously, I write for Lawrence.com, which is a subsidiary of the Journal-World. Also, I know Jon Niccum personally. In January of 2005, my film reviews, which had begun to appear in the Journal-World with some regularity, were also pulled from the newspaper as a result of a re-proportioning of writers. It was decided that Lawrence.com writers were to stay with Lawrence.com, and only Journal-World writers would get printed in the daily paper. Sure, it stung a little bit. I was elated to get my reviews in the Journal-World when I did, and I am thrilled to continue writing for Lawrence.com, both online and in print. But this article is not some kind of sour grapes thing. Over a year and a half later, it is a little late for that. One of the things that make the Lawrence Journal-World a great paper is that it reflects the community. Bringing in faceless movie reviews from the AP wire doesn’t do anything to help that image. It erases the newspaper’s individualism and replaces it with something you can get anywhere else. For a community that came together to fight against another Wal-Mart being built, it’s ironic that the Journal-World doesn’t mind that same “mall mentality” on their entertainment page.