“The first time around, many paywalls simply did not work. But times have changed. The New York Times success in transforming itself into a company that is markedly less dependent on advertising than it has been in recent years has emboldened many other publishers. The Times now makes more than 20 percent of its revenue on digital-only subscriptions, a number which has been growing quickly. In absolute terms, last quarter, the Times made $85.7 million from these digital products. The question is: Can media organizations that are not huge like the Times or The Washington Post, or business focused like Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal, create meaningful businesses from their paywalls?”
Archives for November 2017
Study: Tech Addiction Might Be Caused By Brain Chemical Imbalance
A study of teenagers who are “addicted” to their smartphones or the internet has found that people who struggle with so-called tech addiction seem to have more of a chemical that slows down brain signals, and less of a chemical that makes neurons more active.
Study: Teenage Brains Can’t Distinguish What’s Important (And What’s Not)
“Adults are generally pretty good at being able to tell when a situation is worthy of extra time or concentration. Research has found that, when potential rewards or losses are higher, for example, adults will perform better on tasks. But this doesn’t seem to be the case for adolescents.”
This Year’s Sundance Festival Sits At A Cultural Crossroads
“If the festival’s organizers have found themselves unexpectedly responding to cultural shifts, filmmakers too have seen their work take on new and expanded meaning in the face of the current political environment.”
Lack Of Diversity Among Our Theatre Critics Is Hurting The Theatre
“The lack of diversity in theatre criticism not only does a disservice to the field and the readers, but also to the playwrights and productions. Certainly such artists as Suzan-Lori Parks and Ayad Akhtar, and others artists of color whose work speaks particularly to questions of identity, deserve to have their work scrutinized by a more diverse group of critics. In the age of Hamilton fanatics in New York, Chicago, London, and beyond, audiences have proven that there is not just space but a hunger for stories by and about people of color that work to rewrite, expand, or totally replace the white canon. So where are their peers in criticism?”
How Superstar Mentality Is Endangering The Art World
“The superstar phenomenon is pervasive in the art market. My research of the last few years has documented the increasing dominance of the top end of the market. A very small number of artists, and the galleries representing them, drive the bulk of sales value, while others struggle to survive.
While this top-heavy bias has increased over the last 10 years, the superstar effect has been observed for at least a century.”
Curse Of The One-Hit Choreographer
For choreographers, the postpartum pangs that follow a big triumph can summon doubts about their ability to duplicate a career’s artistic zenith. Critics sneer, ballet masters and directors stifle skeptical looks, audiences question, producers pressure and choreographers agonize about the label of “one-hit wonder.” Has he backed himself into a corner? Has she burned out on ideas? How do you bring something original to the stage without copying yourself or experimenting with disaster?
Why Some Bad Movies Become Cult Classics (And Others Just Don’t)
“Not all bad movies are entertaining. To be worthwhile, they require a sense that someone was actually trying. … Making a purposefully lousy movie is like wearing a Female Body Inspector T-shirt: You might get a cheap laugh, but ultimately, you’re just a guy with questionable taste.”
Good Readers Versus Bad Readers
The good reader’s cultural elevation always relied on his oppositional relationship to the curiously undifferentiated mass of bad readers, who struck Nabokov—and have struck many teachers and literary scholars since—as a kind of irritating background noise; always already present and unworthy of any serious or systematic consideration.
The Long, Surprising History Of Dinosaur Art
“Works of paleoart – a genre that uses fossil evidence to reconstruct vanished worlds – directly shape the way humans imagine the distant past. It’s an easy form to define but a tricky one to work in. Paleontological accuracy is a moving target, with the posture and life appearance of fossil species constantly reshuffled by new discoveries and scientific arguments. Old ideas can linger long after researchers have moved on, while some artists’ wild speculations are proved correct decades after the fact.”
James Salter: Why I Became A Writer
“Why was I writing? It was not for glory; I had seen what I took to be real glory. It was not for acclaim. I knew that if the book was published, it would have to be under a pseudonym; I did not want to jeopardize a career by becoming known as a writer. I had heard the derisive references to “God-Is-My-Copilot” Scott. The ethic of fighter squadrons was drink and daring; anything else was suspect. Still, I thought of myself as more than just a pilot and imagined a book that would be in every way admirable.”
How Dana Gioia Composes His Poems (Very Physically)
BBC World Service’s In the Studio visits the California poet laureate and former NEA chairman at his hilltop retreat, where he talks about how he feels a poem coming on physically and has to walk around as he’s composing it – as well as the origin of the ballad he wrote about the death of his Mexican-American cowboy grandfather in Wyoming. (audio)
Survey: 75 Percent Of Artists Make Less Than $10,000 Per Year (And It’s Getting Worse)
“In the UK survey of 823 artists, 55.1% say they earn between £1,000 and £5,000 net per year while 17.7% earn between £5,000 and £10,000. At the raw end, 9.3% of UK artists state their income as zero. This combined figure of 82.1% is worse than the findings of a previous survey of 1,061 artists, conducted by a-n, an artist data company, which in 2013 found that 72% of artists earned under £10,000. Of the US respondents, 75.2% make less than $10,000, with the majority (48.7%) in the $1,000 to $5,000 bracket; 5.1% in the US stated their income as nothing.”
The Dining Car Could Heal America: Composer Gabriel Kahane’s Amtrak Odyssey
“On Nov. 9, 2016, I boarded the Lake Shore Limited, Amtrak’s overnight service from New York to Chicago. … Over the next 13 days, I would log 8,980 miles aboard six trains, traversing 31 states, subsisting mainly on Three Cheese Tortellini with Creamy Pesto Sauce and Vegetable Medley. During this time, I had conversations with upward of 80 strangers, almost all of whom I met over meals in the dining car.”
‘The Music Of The Plants’ Is A Real Thing (Meaning Plants Are Really Playing Music)
“During a small lecture at a private residence in Delray Beach earlier this month, I watched a houseplant play music, unabashedly and beautifully. Potted and still, it was hooked up to a MIDI machine via electrodes, its bio-emissions creating twinkling melodies. Attached to the same machine, an orchid and rosemary plant played nothing, but this one was active and virtuosic, as though it enjoyed playing.” A reporter talks to a leader of the Music of the Plants project about how all this works.
A Whole New Variety Of English Has Developed In The Lesvos Refugee Camp
“It is unsurprising that simplified English is the lingua franca of Moria prison camp and its environs, spoken between asylum-seekers from formerly-colonised states as disparate as Iraq, Uganda, Pakistan and Burma. But in the crucible of the overcrowded detention centre … English is undergoing an accelerated evolution, tentatively beginning to develop its own unique grammar and idiom.”
The Nationally-Known Arts Education Center That Nearly Collapsed After Its Founder Moved On
“A Reason To Survive, or ARTS, a nonprofit youth arts education center in National City, was close to being shuttered after its founder and CEO Matt D’Arrigo left his post in June. ‘It’s the classic tale of a founder transition,’ said D’Arrigo, who’s back at ARTS as a part-time consultant until the nonprofit is on stabler ground. ‘But it’s not fully closed, they’ve just scaled operations way back.'”
How A Museum ‘De-Installs’ A 30-Foot, 16-Ton Steel Sculpture
To clear space for the renovation of its North Building, the Denver Art Museum had to take apart and move Mark di Suvero’s Lao Tzu. Reporter John Wenzel went to watch.
Tests Reveal The Actual Age Of Jesus’s Tomb In Jerusalem
When the medieval-era shrine at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was restored last year, archaeologists found a previously unknown marble slab with a cross carved on it lying atop the limestone presumed to be the burial bed. Mortar on that marble has now been dated to the 4th-century reign of the Emperor Constantine – seemingly verifying the traditional history that he sent his mother, Helena, to find the location and have the original church built.
Donor Gives Millions To Help Public Radio ‘Disrupt Itself’
“All across the media world, organizations continue to grapple with ‘digital disruption.’ … Which is why the Jerome L. Greene Foundation’s $10 million gift this month to New York Public Radio (NYPR), home to WNYC and WQXR, is so interesting.” Mike Scutari looks at how this donation, along with several others from the Greene Foundation over the past decade, has funded NYPR’s “self-disruption” – that is, its transformation into a “multi-platform journalism service.”
Ticket Resellers In UK Are Flouting The Law, Say Investigators
“At the moment, secondary ticketing sites are required to tell customers whether there are restrictions on using a resold ticket, such as the need for photo identification. They must also make clear exactly where the customer will be seated in the venue and who the customer is buying the ticket from, whether an individual or a business. Due to the large amount of evidence gathered, the [Competition and Markets Authority] has now broadened the scope of its investigation.”
This New Concert Hall Really Is Pulling In A New Audience
Before the Philharmonie de Paris opened in early 2015, many observers fretted that the mostly older, well-heeled classical music fans in the city would not travel out to a big, modernist venue on the northern edge of the city. Nearly three years later, concerts are selling better than they used to at the (older and smaller) Salle Pleyel, and the crowds are younger and more diverse.
MPR Cuts All Ties With Garrison Keillor Over ‘Inappropriate Behavior’; Keillor Responds With His Version
In response to the accusation from an unnamed former co-worker, Minnesota Public Radio will cease distributing reruns of old Prairie Home Companion shows and merchandise as well as Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac; the current PHC with Chris Thile will be renamed. Keillor himself has given responses to The Star Tribune and on Facebook.
You Know How People Start Reading Books And Don’t Finish? They’re No Better About Audiobooks
“New stats revealed this week by audiobooks.com showed how many (or few) of us get to the end of a range of audiobooks. They make tough reading for Craig Oliver, whose No 10 [Downing St] Brexit memoirs, Unleashing Demons, kept only 20% of readers rapt until the end. The oft-unfinished War and Peace retained about the same proportion through its 60-plus hours of narration (stats were not available for Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time).”
El Sistema Comes To Kenya
“Though Faith Syovata had almost lost her voice because of a cold, the students still hung on her every whispered word. With violins tucked under their chins, the 14-year-olds at Kawangware Primary School here had their bows at the ready as she pointed out notes for the song on the blackboard.” A reporter visits a Sistema classroom in a Nairobi slum.