Good Morning
Sometimes the moral arc of the universe does begin to bend in the right direction. A federal jury has ruled that Ticketmaster and Live Nation operate an illegal monopoly in the ticketing market — a finding that directly rebukes the DOJ settlement reportedly ordered by President Trump just last month (Variety). The question now isn’t whether they’re a monopoly. It’s what anyone is going to do about it.
Meanwhile, the fight over who controls access keeps showing up everywhere. Theater owners are pushing back hard against the Paramount/Warner merger, warning it will concentrate too much power over what gets shown on American screens (Los Angeles Times). We hear that that letter signed by 1000 Hollywood industry people protesting the deal has now surged past 3000. And the V&A quietly deleted images from its own exhibition catalogues because its Chinese printer flagged them as violating Chinese censorship laws (The Guardian). A British museum, editing itself for Beijing.
On the survival front: the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, three weeks from shutting down, has been acquired by the nonprofit behind The Baltimore Banner (Nieman Lab). Hampshire College wasn’t as lucky — the experimental liberal arts school is closing for good (WBUR).
And Jackie Chan is directing Turandot. With martial arts. Each character gets a warrior incarnation. Puccini would have had questions.
All of our stories below.
- – Doug
