Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
Meet This Year’s MacArthur Fellows
The fellowship is “intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual and professional inclinations,” and comes with a $800,000...
Why More And More Writers Are Dropping Quotation Marks
The reasons vary, but more writers are dropping speech marks to explore distances between readers and narrators and even to eliminate hierarchies. - The...
The Right People Aren’t In The Room Talking About AI
AI absolutely is powerful, and it absolutely is dangerous. But as these perspectives reverberate throughout committee hearings, government advisory boards, press releases, and lobbying...
U Penn Shunned Her And Her Work. Now That She’s Won The Nobel Prize,...
Penn demoted Katalin Karikó, shunting her to a lab on the outskirts of campus while cutting her pay. Karikó’s colleagues denigrated her mRNA research and...
Amazon Controls Markets (Including Culture). Now The US Government Is Taking The Company On
In the era of the Internet, a framework that analyzed the benefits to consumers primarily through the metric of cost was no longer realistic,...
Did You Know History Could Have A Gender?
“I’m guessing most of the men who say they think about it all of the time are probably white, cis men. And it’s no...
What If The Robots Were So Nice As They Beat Us That We Were...
Maybe AI will just amplify what’s best about humans. Maybe AI will become a buoyant tribute band for our entire species. Maybe AI will be...
Fifty Years On: Hip Hop As A Cultural Phenomenon
For decades hip-hop artists have used their power as popular culture stars to influence the political sphere. As academics have begun to take notice of the power of hip-hop...
Classical Languages In Learned Circles Of The 18th Century – All For Show?
Early eighteenth-century readers cannot necessarily have been secure in their ability to understand the books they read, and they were not necessarily encouraged to...
Why Science Researchers Need Artists On Their Teams
Over a decade of merging science and art, I’ve discovered three major advantages to such collaborations. - The Conversation
San Francisco Symphony Musicians Finally Got A Contract. But There’s An Existential But
Like the 45-day budget bill passed by the U.S. Congress the day before, this new contract seems likely to serve as little more than a stopgap...
Why Boredom Matters
Just as a person cannot be talked out of serious depression or anxiety, rational arguments against boredom seldom avail. A person must take interest in something,...
Netflix Will Raise Subscription Price After The Actors Strike
The streaming service is discussing raising prices in several markets globally, but will likely begin with the U.S. and Canada, according to people familiar...
We Need A Lot Better Thinking On AI And The Arts
I’m not foolish or backward enough to think that AI is a passing fad. It’s a tool that we’ll see incorporated and integrated, like...
A Letter To North Carolina Classical Radio: Banning Opera Broadcasts Is An Odd Logic
These “time-tested and great operas” that you tout in your letter are rife with misogyny, violence, racism and casual pedophilia. You say you are...
There Are Two Kinds Of Science Writers
Artists are big on literary science writing; craftsmen are big on explanatory science writing. Artists write beautiful prose; craftsmen write clear prose. Artists write...
Streaming Is Looking More And More Like The Old Cable Bundles (And It Costs...
The “new” media landscape is starting to look a lot like the “old” media landscape. - Shelly Palmer
Research: The Intellectual Abilities Required To Lie
Research suggests that, in addition to more obvious factors – such as moral beliefs about honesty and corresponding emotions such as guilt – the tendency to...
Spotify Is All In On AI – Now AI-Created Playlists
Following the successful launch of Spotify’s AI-powered DJ feature and, more recently, added support for AI-translated podcasts, Spotify now appears to be developing another means of using...
In Test Of Watermarks For AI, Researchers Were Able To Break Them All
In addition to demonstrating how attackers might remove watermarks, the study shows how it’s possible to add watermarks to human-generated images, triggering false positives....
Europe’s Biggest Music Festival Struggled This Summer. Are The Good Times Over?
Summer festivals now face a balancing act between creative imagination and fiscal conservatism in the wake of a Covid wipeout that dispelled the older...
A Year After Their Last Contract Expired, San Francisco Symphony Musicians Sign A New...
The new contract mandates a minimum weekly salary of $3,313 ($172,276 annually), rising by the end of the term to $3,450 ($179,400). - San...
North Carolina Radio Director Tries To Make Her Case For Not Airing Metropolitan Opera...
Breaking into tears on the phone, Deborah Proctor said: "I have a moral decision to make here. What if one child hears this? When...
TV After Peak TV
Now television’s boom cycle has gone bust and Peak TV is winding down, like prestige TV did before it. There are hints of what...
The Next Act: What Post-Strike Hollywood Might Look Like
One veteran TV producer predicted the number of scripted shows Hollywood produces could fall by one-third in the next three years. - The Wall...
