The former MSNBC morning news anchor created the digital news media company Ozy in 2013. Prosecutors allege that, as it failed to make money, Watson falsified visitor statistics, forged financial documents, and had his co-founder impersonate a YouTube executive on a call with Goldman Sachs. - The Daily Beast (Yahoo!)
Last year, the city of Leeds held a year-long celebration of culture. This year, however, artists and creatives in the West Yorkshire city are being forced out of their workshops and galleries, and say the dwindling number of spaces is crushing Leeds’s creative scene. -The Guardian
"The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a Penguin Random House division, announced Monday the dismissals of Alfred A. Knopf publisher Reagan Arthur and Pantheon/Schocken publisher Lisa Lucas. A publishing official … said that the restructuring was for financial reasons." - AP
To be more precise, there is a play about creating a play about the incident, which made headlines worldwide and got the choreographer fired from two posts. The piece, titled The Dog Poop Attack and currently at the Theatertreffen festival in Berlin, is making rather a splash. - The New York Times
Andrew Ousley decided to present his concert series Death of Classical in the crypt of Harlem's Church of the Intercession not only because the acoustics were remarkable, but because so many potential audience members seemed put off by traditional venues. Then he went on to Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery … - The Guardian
Trump spokesperson: "We will be filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers. This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies." Director Ali Abbasi: "Everybody talks about him suing a lot of people. They don’t talk about his success rate, though." - Los Angeles Times (Yahoo!)
The actress, who voiced the title character of the Spike Jonze movie about a guy falling in love with a chatbot, says OpenAI approached her last fall asking permission to use her voice for one of their bots. She declined, but says the company created one that sounds "eerily similar." - AP
Reeling with a $1 million budget deficit on a $4 million budget due largely to "the Basquiat fiasco," the museum wants to re-allocate the $1.8 million it was given from the estate of Margaret Young from its designated purpose of acquiring new works for the permanent collection. - The New York Times
"British-born, Ghana-based artist Joseph Awuah-Darko accused star artist Kehinde Wiley of sexual assault in an Instagram post published Sunday and said that he is seeking 'legal action.' On his own Instagram, Wiley denied the allegations." - ARTnews
Historical ideas of what constitutes arts and culture and the roots of racial injustice are being re-examined, and these investments mark a step in the direction of expanding public understanding of artistic excellence and what it means to be an American. - Hyperallergic
It feels a bit like the Roaring '20s - appropriate since the current Broadway season also features a musical adaptation of "The Great Gatsby." And like the '20s, there are signs of a looming crash. - NPR
Though, well, “due to the lack of cataloguing and records, the museum has had trouble proving which of the recovered items came from its collections, so for now, it is receiving these objects back as donations.” - BBC
On the one hand, a reduction in the number of work-related commutes is good for the environment. On the other, entire days spent on Zoom and using other modern technologies are potentially hazardous to employees’ physical and mental health. - The Walrus
Misinformation graffiti is going to haunt me. But, cities, over time, learned how to deal with those problems to make cities more livable—but the web is so relatively new that we just don’t have many of those systems on it yet. - The Atlantic
2024 will also be known as the true beginning of the end of mega-live music festival culture with the unexciting two weekends of Coachella in Indio, California, the probable finale of Delaware’s Frye Festival, and, after two straight years of cancellation, the Made in America festival in Philadelphia. - The Smart Set
