“When Premiere magazine announced last month that its April issue would be its last, the epitaph for long-form movie journalism may well have been written,” Anne Thompson declares in her latest Variety column. “After all, in a world where movie fans can read about movies, see pictures, trailers and video, and find their theaters and showtimes online, who needs a movie magazine anymore?

“At a time when the likes of celebrity website TMZ.com, Defamer and People.com rush amateur photos of the Hollywood Hills brush fire and news of Mel Gibson‘s latest indiscretion to the web at the speed of thought, writers and editors who once specialized in crafting polished in-depth insider features about Hollywood stars and filmmakers are learning the mantra of the web: Write fast — and write short.”

Plus it’s nice to be mentioned in this graph: “Now there’s too much clutter in the online movie space to grab a toehold. How to compete with Rotten Tomatoes, the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), E! Online, Fandango, CHUD, IGN Film Force, Yahoo Movies, Movie City News, Movies.com and AOL Moviefone, not to mention bloggers such as Perezhilton, Deadline Hollywood Daily, Cinematical, and Hollywood Elsewhere?