A few thoughts on National Summit on Arts Journalism

With the old delivery systems for arts journalism in rocky shape, the National Arts Journalism Program sent out a Web-wide request for new models. A whooping 108 came in. Five were selected to present at a conference in LA Oct. 2 (identities released then), and five more ideas to enlarge the discussion. (NAJP Release here.) The enlarging five are:

Sophie: A new authoring tool for multimedia developed by the Institute for Multimedia Literacy that suggests new possibilities for presenting critical response.

Indianapolis Museum of Art: With its Art Babble and Dashboard, the IMA is an example of a cultural institution extending its reach into areas that have traditionally been the province of journalism.

 InstantEncore.com: An example of an aggregator attempting to gather up everything about an art form (in this case classical music) and making it accessible in one place.

NPR Music: An example of a traditional big media company that is reinventing itself across platforms. NPR Music blurs the lines between journalism, curation, presenting and producing. 

Gazette Communications, Cedar Rapids Iowa: An example of a local media company trying to reinvent the idea of what it considers news and how it might be gathered and presented to a local community.

Taken together, I found the proposals heartening, even though few are financially robust. At best, they point the way towards a future that might achieve real jobs but are far from doing so now.

The Brookyn Rail does not pay its contributors. Living on air gets thin. Other favorites from the visual art category include:

Art Fag City, Triple Canopy, Departures, Big, RED & Shiny, Bad At Sports, Dinosaurs & Robots, Idaho Arts Quarterly, Glasstire, Of Note, Kung Fu Art Critic and a site under construction, East of Borneo, which will be edited by Thomas Lawson.

There are flashier sites on the list, most prominently, FLYP Media, which is gorgeous and technically inventive. Good luck to FLYP, which seems to be aiming for an undifferentiated audience, one that will be impressed by the site's click power and not put off by soft, feature-style arts writing.

People already in the game, on the other hand, aren't likely to want to read what they already know, even though production values are stellar. As a bridge builder between the art audience and everybody else, FLYP serves the purpose. Its texts are elementary, but its mainstream taste is reliable. If you've never heard of John Baldessari, this site's for you.