Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
States Say They Will Sue To Block Paramount/Warner Deal
If Paramount doesn’t lock this down by October, it’s on the hook to pay shareholders a near-$6.9 million daily fee. - Gizmodo
Paramount Launches A Games Studio
Paramount Games Studio launches as Paramount Skydance is awaiting regulatory approval on its pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. WBD has its own in-house...
Sotheby’s Tried To Quietly Sell A Pollock For $50M. It Didn’t Go Well
According to one source familiar with the effort, Sotheby’s could not find enough bidders to get the auction off the ground. The auction was...
Audiobook Sales Up 9 Percent In 2025, To $2.4B
General fiction accounted for the largest share of audiobook revenue at 27%, with science fiction/fantasy, romance, and mysteries/thrillers/suspense rounding out the top genres. The...
Broadway’s big night — hold the comfort food
Good Morning,
The Tony awards last night said a lot about where Broadway's head is at: more reassurance than risk. Vulture handicapped the field (Vulture)...
AJ Chronicles: A New Policy to Eliminate Arguments for the Arts
This notion that the ultimate measure of American educational value is economic is an impoverishing one. We measure for success. If that measure is earnings then we optimize for earnings. Social value measured on an earnings scale doesn't just get deprioritized, it doesn't exist.
YouTubers Invade This Summer’s Movie Theatre Screens
Kane Parsons, 20, and Curry Barker, 26, the directors behind Backrooms and Obsession who both built their audiences on YouTube, have become two of the youngest filmmakers to...
Good AI? Model Proposes Thousands Of Designs, Test Them, Then Adapts
The AI model proposed study designs, and robots carried them out and fed the data back to the model for the next round. Humans...
Lessons From The Enhanced Games
Trying to break world records remains a high-risk, high-reward strategy for Enhanced. The event proved that breaking records is incredibly difficult, even with PEDs...
If You Don’t Use AI It’s Tough To Spot AI
One of the problems with AI use seeping out of business and science writing and into the ‘literary’ world is that literary editors may be the...
Bari Weiss May Have Killed Television’s Most Successful Show Ever
"I don't know Bari Weiss' motivations, but it's hard to imagine that you would create so much turmoil in such a profitable show if...
Criticism In The Age Of AI: It’s Superfluous
The early parts of the story of how the humanities turned against “the human” are well told in two intellectual histories. - Hedgehog Review
The Japanese Dancers Who Have Chosen To Work In Russia
"I love Russian ballet and always wanted to become a dancer, but there is no national ballet school in Japan, so I chose Russia,"...
The Man Now Making Movie Decisions For Netflix
Dan Lin’s instructions at Netflix are to spend less money on fewer, better movies. - The New York Times
The Music Industry’s Music Streaming Problem
The industry is not short of superfans. It never has been. It is short of the infrastructure and the will to treat them as...
There’s A Big Need For Creative Talent In The Age Of AI
Our survey found that 79% of Americans believe that cities investing in colleges dedicated to the creative industry will be more successful economically in...
Pace Gallery Cuts 50 Artists, 50 Staff
“The whole art gallery art system became too big, too commercial, too impersonal and too corporate,” Marc Glimcher, the chief executive, said in an...
Hollywood Is Using AI – Like It Or Not
The AI revolution in Hollywood is not just real, but taking form in tangible projects that people can now see. Whether it's animated shorts,...
Chaos At 60 Minutes
If Bilton stays, as he presumably will, the organization will try to muddle its way forward, damaged and listing and leaking to the gossip...
All 11 Edinburgh Festivals Propose A Common Ticket Platform
The festivals involved in the plan, including the main international festival, will soon invite bidders to investigate how to merge the ticketing operations and data...
Are The Arts Simply Incompatible With Right Wing Government?
A belief that what is good will be paid for by consumers, and that the state should stand back and play as small a...
Japan Embraces ‘Zines
“I think print media is incredibly open. You can hand it to someone, you can read it together,” Obara says, calling mobile phones “very...
Why Trump’s Arch Is So Wrong
Triumphal arches are thuggish. They’re the architectural equivalent of a domestic abuser standing, arms crossed, legs athwart, in front of the bedroom door. I prefer...
Monet Heirs Case Against Wildenstein Allowed To Continue
The complex case revolves around a 2004 transaction, in which Monet’s great-nephew agreed to relinquish a rare Monet painting depicting the artist’s father, Adolphe,...
Venice Biennale Artists Protest Awards Inclusions
More than 100 artists are threatening legal action against the Venice Biennale Foundation for ignoring their demands that the foundation withdraw their names from consideration for...
