Douglas McLennan
Doug is the editor of ArtsJournal
In Walking Away, Netflix Won The Warner Deal
For Netflix, such a deal would have complicated the business model for a company that had already vaulted to a leading position in Hollywood on its...
Live Nation Antitrust Trial Begins — Will The Music Juggernaut Be Broken Up?
For Live Nation, the stakes are high — a possible breakup of the company, or at least a disruption of the lucrative business model...
How A Phone Ban Changed One School
Anton Caldwell, Shawnee's librarian for more than 20 years, says he knew right away the ban was working. The number of students visiting the...
Mamdani Picks A New Culture Commissioner For NYC
An experienced curator with a community-forward approach, she has held several key positions at Creative Time, the High Line, and elsewhere. She has even worked at...
Warning: Age Verification Laws For Social Media Are A Disaster
While social media bans may seem like a prudent measure to protect children, they are not only ineffective, they endanger both children and adults....
AJ Chronicles: The Battles for Who gets to say what Culture Is
Evidence abounds this week that the battles for culture are intensifying. Taken together, these tests of authority over cultural institutions are probes of where the line is, of how much self-censorship the cultural sector will perform without being explicitly required to.
Ode To A Great Editor
During my own editing stint, I came to understand writers as prisoners of their own minds, pressed up against the bars of the words...
California Attorney General Warns Paramount Buy Of Warner “Not A Done Deal” Yet
Rob Bonta’s cold water on the Paramount-WBD fireworks comes a week after the CA Department of Justice opened a probe into any deal to take over WB...
Non-Professional Actors At The Heart Of Movies
The prominence of movies featuring nonprofessionals is no surprise: directors may make movies what they are, but actors are what viewers see, and these...
Sorry, “Guerilla Teaching” Isn’t Allowed In Smithsonian Galleries
He was at the Portrait Gallery as an educator but also as co-founder of Citizen Historians for the Smithsonian, a group that last year...
Pompeii Gets a Digital Makeover: Now With Less Ash
Forget the petrified citizens – new 3D renderings show Pompeii as the thriving metropolis it was before Vesuvius crashed the party. Because apparently we...
Woman Sues Meta, YouTube Over Social Media Use
Wearing a pink dress and cardigan, Kaley told the jury that she started watching YouTube videos at age 6 and made an Instagram account...
Congressional Republicans Propose National Book Banning
House Resolution 7661 transforms grassroots library battles into national policy, giving censors sweeping powers to purge school and public collections. Democracy's reading rooms become...
Where Has The Sex Gone? Our Literature Is Getting Cleaner
Literary writers have other demands to satisfy. In general, readers come to their books seeking not an escape from reality but perspective on it....
A Dystopian Story About An AI-Ridden 2028 Sparked A $200 Billion Crash Of The...
A speculative blog post about 2028's AI-choked economy just vaporized $200 billion in market value. When your dystopian fiction gets confused for a Goldman...
A Real Shit Show: Berlinale’s Director Faces Axe Over Israel Stance
Tricia Tuttle discovers that running a major film festival means navigating more landmines than a war correspondent. Her crime? Apparently failing to muzzle artists...
Netflix Backs Out Of Offer For Warner; Paramount Wins
Netflix said that it would not raise its offer to counter a higher bid made earlier this week by Mr. Ellison’s company, Paramount Skydance,...
Cappella Romana Founder Alexander Lingas Steps Down After 35 Years
In the decades since its founding concerts, the Portland-based professional vocal ensemble has gone on to become the premier exponent and explorer of the...
How Awards Have Defined The Canadian Music Industry
National arts award ceremonies like the Junos are part of a cultural system that help define who belongs, who succeeds and what counts as “Canadian” in...
A Rebirth In Critic-ing?
If the review sections of newspapers are closing down, there’s a sense that this moment could make room for a meatier, weirder kind of...
LA’s New Golden Age Of Museums
This shift to the West Coast has long been driven by the region’s many art schools, including the ArtCenter, California Institute of the Arts,...
London’s Globe Theatre Launches “Environmental Playwright” Prize
It is this connection with the bard’s work that has inspired Shakespeare’s Globe to launch its first climate playwriting prize for 2026, which it...
Study: Gen Z’s View Of Masculinity Is Changing
The study surveyed 1,500 tweens, teens and young adults, ages 10-24, finding that these groups want to see boys and men on TV and...
The Existential Challenges Facing Disney’s New CEO
There’s a phrase that’s used around the Magic Kingdom to describe this phenomenon: “the Josh Effect.” D’Amaro — tall, slender and silver-haired — has a politician’s ability to make anyone he encounters feel...
The Qualities Of Ethics Required For Good Government
In a world increasingly defined by distance, between citizen and state, between policy and experience, between law and justice, Rammohun Roy offers a reminder...
