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Archives for January 2016

@AJDoug’s Top Arts and Culture Stories of the Week for 01.31.16

January 31, 2016 by Douglas McLennan 1 Comment

It's the week before the American primary season gets real with voting in Iowa on Monday and I'm sure you've all checked out the candidates' positions on arts and culture, right? If so, let me know - I went looking this week and found... nothing. But here here are some highlights from the 172 stories we did find: The New York Philharmonic Chooses a New Music Director and the Reaction … [Read more...]

The Virtual Arts – Have It Your Way?

January 26, 2016 by Douglas McLennan 1 Comment

C-NET came away from this month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas pronouncing that virtual reality is going to displace traditional porn. No surprise that the porn industry leads in technology. Because of all the money in the early days of the internet, porn invested heavily in technology and pioneered pop-ups, redirects, payment collection and more. Much of your everyday internet … [Read more...]

FIVE PICKS: Stories From This Week’s ArtsJournal

January 24, 2016 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

Welcome to our weekly "best of" ArtsJournal. These aren't necessarily the most important of the 156 stories we found this week, but they particularly caught our eye. Your #AllWhiteOscars Controversy Primer The biggest flurry of stories this week was the reaction to last week's Oscars nominations, where for the second week in a row, all the top nominees were white. The week began with talk … [Read more...]

What Makes A Great Blog(ger)? Five Observations

January 21, 2016 by Douglas McLennan 3 Comments

As inconsistent and distracted a blogger as I am, I am hardly a great blogger. But as someone who runs a network of arts blogs, I do have some observations. Great bloggers don't just get you interested in a post, they draw you into a topic. They stake out that topic, pick away at it, play with it, make you care about it. No one post explains who they are; you only get it over time, as they … [Read more...]

Playing For The Screens – Is Our Obsession With Video Changing The Live Arts Experience?

January 20, 2016 by Douglas McLennan 4 Comments

One weekend last November, the biggest box-office at movie theatres throughout the UK wasn't for the latest Hollywood blockbuster (the latest "Hunger Games" movie opened that Friday). It was for a live broadcast of  Kenneth Branagh’s production of  "The Winter’s Tale" which was streamed live to 520 theatres in the UK and 100 more internationally on November 26. Starring Branagh and Judi Dench, it … [Read more...]

If Dance Can’t Pay Its Dancers What Does It Mean To Be A Professional Dancer?

January 19, 2016 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

A survey of dancers in the UK  last summer reported that "more than half of professional dancers earn less than £5,000 a year from their performance work." That's professional dancers. "The statistics also show that around 50% of dancers’ jobs pay less than the minimum wage, and that 70% of dancers have performed in 'unsuitable work environments' in the past 12 months." Add to this how short … [Read more...]

Last Week’s Top Stories on ArtsJournal

January 18, 2016 by Douglas McLennan Leave a Comment

We're aggregating upwards of 150 stories a week on ArtsJournal these days. Despite the decimation of the daily newspaper arts journalism profession, there are more good stories about the arts now than there have ever been. But that also means it's more difficult to sort through. We look through more than 1000 stories a day and pick 20-30. But maybe there's a finer sort that would be useful. In two … [Read more...]

When Libraries Realize That The Most Valuable Thing They Own Isn’t Their Collections

January 11, 2016 by Douglas McLennan 5 Comments

Remember when the internet came along and everyone wondered whether there would still be a use for libraries? Oddly, just as the question was being called, in the early 2000s there was a building boom of new libraries around North America. And public libraries didn't die, they flourished, many reinventing themselves as community centers for the 21st Century. The idea of a public library is … [Read more...]

Is Earning Making Money The New Audience-Building Strategy?

January 4, 2016 by Douglas McLennan 1 Comment

Maybe it's obvious, but in the for-profit world, making money is the point; profit defines success. In the non-profit world, the relationship between profit and success is more complicated. "Profit" (or balancing the books) is regarded as a hill to be climbed over rather than the objective. In the hyper-connected world of social media, profit is no longer simply about selling more product. More … [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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Recent Comments

  • Sam Hodak on Too Many Artists Or Not Enough Value?: “So what you’re telling me is… make a VR experience” May 12, 00:03
  • Mark on What If Disruption Was Just A Tech Con Game?: “Thank you” Mar 19, 13:15
  • 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
  • John McCann on Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale: “I haven’t read this book, yet your review triggered an insight about information shared within organizations and how so much…” Nov 26, 03:57
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  • Alan Harrison on The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts?: “Brilliant piece, Doug. It’s why, in my own columns on LinkedIn and Medium, I may have become more strident recently…” Jun 8, 15:46
  • 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

Top Posts

  • If Dance Can't Pay Its Dancers What Does It Mean To Be A Professional Dancer?
  • "Art Is Good?" Not Much Of An Argument For Art Is It?
  • Five Things to Fix in the Arts
  • Are Arts Leaders "Cultural" Leaders?

Recent Posts

  • Still Amusing Ourselves to Death: Information as Cautionary Tale November 25, 2022
  • The UnderTow: What the new Edinburgh Fringe Tells us about a Post-COVID World June 26, 2022
  • The UnderTow: The High-flying Oil Industry fears “Demand Destruction.” Should the Arts? June 7, 2022
  • The UnderTow: Subscriptions are the New Business Model of Choice. So Why are Subscriptions Failing in the Arts? May 23, 2022
  • This Week’s UnderTow: Why are Police Playing Disney Songs? And Why did this Orchestra Fire its Conductor for… Conducting? April 23, 2022
January 2016
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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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