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Archives for June 2009

Microsoft CEO Predicts All News Content Online In 10 Years

June 24, 2009 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

Steve Ballmer, speaking at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival, said he doesn't see a recovery for the news industry after the recession:"I don't think we are in a recession, I think we have reset," he said. "A recession implies recovery [to pre-recession levels] and for planning purposes I don't think we will. We have reset and won't rebound and re-grow."So how will we get our news? "All … [Read more...]

Power Curve: Four (Short) Stories About Empowering Audiences

June 24, 2009 by Douglas McLennan 3 Comments

A few years ago arts organizations had the bright idea that they should sell tickets online. Not wanting to invest much in the effort, they turned to the obvious ready-made ticket seller: Ticketmaster. It wasn't an encouraging experience. Orchestras reported mediocre online sales. It wasn't until a customized ticket-selling web application came online that online sales proved their worth. What was … [Read more...]

Bill Ivey Talks About Obama and the Arts and Whether America Should Have a Secretary of Culture

June 23, 2009 by Douglas McLennan 1 Comment

Bill Ivey was chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts during the Clinton administration. More recently he has been director of the Curb Center at Vanderbilt University, and, after last year's presidential election, ran the Obama administration's transition team for culture. So what place will the arts have in the new administration? Ivey says the jury's still out. As for another big issue … [Read more...]

Will Technology Make Our Intellectual Property Laws Obsolete?

June 22, 2009 by Douglas McLennan 2 Comments

Interesting take on the future of copyright and patent law by Eric Reasons:Every business model relying on intellectual property law (patent and copyright) is heading for massive deflation in our lifetimes. We've seen it with the music industry and newspapers already. The software industry is starting to feel it with the maturity of open source software, and the migration of applications to the … [Read more...]

The Text Revolution – Why Text Is More Efficient Than TV

June 21, 2009 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

In the TV Age the tube has dominated breaking news. Watching crucial moments of a big dramatic story on TV can be compelling, and the TV news audience has dwarfed newspaper readership. It is accepted wisdom that TV owns the dramatic breaking story; newspapers bat cleanup.But maybe not. Watch a big story on cable news and you're in for acres of boring vamping and conjecture wrapped around the … [Read more...]

Is Working For Free A Threat Or An Opportunity?

June 15, 2009 by Douglas McLennan 2 Comments

Google has asked prominent illustrators if they'd like to create new skins for the company's Chrome browser. Here's the catch: Google isn't offering any money for the designs. Google expects artists to contribute for free. Understandably, many illustrators and artists are protesting; a rich company like Google can afford to pay, and asking people to work for free devalues the work.Stan Schroeder … [Read more...]

Money Back Guarantee – Can You Take The Risk Out Of Paying To See Art?

June 12, 2009 by Douglas McLennan 3 Comments

Richard Cahan had an idea. If theatres were worried about programming risky work because audiences might not shell out money to see it, and audiences were balking when it came to taking a chance on something new, why not just eliminate the risk?Cahan's a part-time program officer with the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation in Chicago, so he came up with a plan: the foundation would back a money-back … [Read more...]

Terms Of Endearment – How Does An Orchestra Spell Success?

June 10, 2009 by Douglas McLennan 1 Comment

How do good ideas take hold? It's not enough to talk about them; the context in which you talk about them has to be right. How do producers pitch ideas for movies? They relate them to other movies that have already been successful. So Terminator meets Cheaper by the Dozen gets you to Kindergarten Cop (don't ask). Bilbao Guggenheim gets you to a whole new generation of museum buildings as art. … [Read more...]

Is Yelp Replacing Arts Journalists?

June 7, 2009 by Douglas McLennan 2 Comments

Craigslist stole in and took the classified ad business away from newspapers while they weren't looking. The same thing seems to be happening to A&E reviews and listings with Yelp. Newspapers have been doing a worse and worse job of reviewing local performances. And most newspaper listings are not very good.Yelp is a community built around reviews. Yelp users review everything, and as its user … [Read more...]

When The Mob Turns Angry, What's A Museum To Do?

June 4, 2009 by Douglas McLennan 6 Comments

A week ago New York Magazine art critic Jerry Saltz launched a bomb on his Facebook page: "The Museum of Modern Art practices a form of gender-based apartheid. Of the 383 works currently installed on the 4th and 5th floors of the permanent collection, only 19 are by women; that's 4%. There are 135 different artists installed on these floors; only nine of them are women; that's 6%. MoMA is telling … [Read more...]

Of Rocket Science And Making Money On Journalism

June 3, 2009 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

Further to yesterday's post on how newspapers ought to expand their definition of news to make money comes this post by Steve Outing, suggesting such a strategy:The way for newspapers to charge for content is not rocket science. They must create new types of high-value, probably niche, content, communities, and/or services that are unique enough that people will be willing to pay for them. That's … [Read more...]

Maybe It's Time To Think Bigger?

June 2, 2009 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

So journalism has to change. Everyone gets that. But most new models I see are really traditional journalism gussied up in new tools. Or, they reinvent in such a way that throws away some traditional journalistic values. Most conceptual re-imagining of journalism is still tied to the events-of-the-hour sort. What happened today. Traditional journalism has been good at this kind of reporting, not … [Read more...]

Douglas McLennan

I’m the founder and editor of ArtsJournal, which was founded in September 1999 and aggregates arts and culture news from all over the internet. The site is also home to some 60 arts bloggers. I’m a … [Read More...]

About diacritical

Our culture is undergoing profound changes. Our expectations for what culture can (or should) do for us are changing. Relationships between those who make and distribute culture and those who consume it are changing. And our definitions of what artists are, how they work, and how we access them and their work are changing. So... [Read more]

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  • Douglas McLennan on Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale: “Hi John: Yes – remember over the last decade how Big Data was going to change everything and drive every…” Nov 26, 07:46
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  • Tom Corddry on The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?: “Slick analogy. Social scientists estimate that 95% of everything we do is basically done out of habit, because it’s an…” Jun 7, 21:04
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  • Douglas McLennan on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “I think the membership model is an interesting variant. And the web has gone back and forth on labeling its…” May 31, 07:42
  • Douglas McLennan on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “Thanks Gary. I originally had a section in this podcast discussing why the NYTs’ success hasn’t worked its way down…” May 31, 07:19
  • sandi kurtz on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “A couple of thoughts. The single subscription model, where you sign on to the entire run of the season, curated…” May 30, 23:57
  • Gary P Steuer on The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?: “Loved the podcast Doug. Glad you included newspapers as an example of another business type that has pivoted towards subscriptions.…” May 28, 12:11

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An ArtsJournal Blog

Recent Posts

  • Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale
  • The UnderTow: What the new Edinburgh Fringe Tells us about a Post-COVID World
  • The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?
  • The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts?
  • This Week’s UnderTow: Why are Police Playing Disney Songs? And Why did this Orchestra Fire its Conductor for… Conducting?

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